# LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, t 



^ ■ 

! UNITED STATES OF AMKHICA.! 



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WORDS OF HOPE. 









THAT YE SORROW NOT, EVEN AS OTHERS 
WHICH HAVE NO HOPE." 



y\ 





•BOSTON: 

LEE AND SHEPARD 

1869. 
■ 



aAoO 






Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868, by 

LEE AND SHEPARD, 

In the Cleik's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 



.STEREOTYPED AT THE 

BOSTON STEREOTYPE FOUNDRY, 

19 Spring Lane. 



PressAvork bv John \yilson and Son. 




PREFATORY, 



THE favor with which "Golden Truths'' 
has been received has induced the com- 
piler to prepare another volume of selections. 
It has been made for those who have recently 
been called to stand by the graves of their 
loved ones ; but while specially intended to 
meet the wants of this large class, it is be- 
lieved to contain those truths which are dear 
to every Christian heart, — for have we not all 
friends Who have been taken from our sight? 
The first and second sections treat of those 
truths which so comfort the heart in its hours of 
deepest anguish, — "God chasteneth in Love," 

and " Trust in God." The third points to that 

(iii) 



iv Prefatory. 



Sympathizing Friend, " who has borne our 
griefs and carried our sorrows," and the fourth 
tells of the precious Fruit which Sorrow may 
bring forth in the soul. 

The fifth section contains consolation for 
those whose little ones have gone home before 
them, and the sixth and seventh speak of 
Death and The Eternal Home, — those mys- 
teries into which we pry with such eager, 
longing eyes, when our beloved have passed 
within the veil. 

That these may prove Words of Hope and 
Consolation to many sorrowing hearts, is the 
earnest wish of the compiler. 

C. A. Means. 

Dorchester, Mass. 





CONTENTS. 

•<>-• 

PAGE 

God chasteneth in Love . . . . « . i 

Trust in God 21 

The Sympathizing Friend 53 

The Fruit of Sorrow 77 

Children in Heaven 117 

Death - . . . . 159 

The Eternal Home , 209 




(y) 




SELECTIONS 



Are made from the following Authors. 



Prose, 



Ada»is, Rev. Willia^i (Isle of Wight). 

Bethune, Dr. G. W. 

Boyd, Rev. A. K. H. 

Brooks, Rev. Thomas. 

Browning, Mrs. E. B. 

Buchanan, Dr. James. 

Burgess, Bishop. 

Cecil, Rev. Richard. 

Dorr, Dr. Benjamin. 

Foster, Rev. John. 

Gasparin, Madame de- 

Greenwell, Dora. 

Hall, Bishop. 

Hall, Rev. Robert. 

Hamilton, Dr. James. 

Huntington, Dr. F. D. 



James, Rev. John Angell. 
Kennedy, Rev. J. 
Kingsley, Rev. Charles. 
i^lACDUFF, Rev. John R. 
Mackenzie, Rev. J. A. 
Means, Rev. J. H. 
Melvill, Rev. Henry. 
Perthes, Prof. T. C. 
Raleigh, Dr. Alexander. 
Robertson, Rev. F. W. 
Rogers, Henry. 
Tholuck, Prof. 
Thompson, Dr. J. P. 
Whitley, Dr. John. 
WiNSLOW, Rev. Octavius. 

ZSCHOKKE. 

(vii) 



Vlll 



List of Author's. 



Poetrg. 



Bethune, G. W. 

BONAK, HORATIUS. 

Bowles. 
Browning, E. B. 
conder, josiah. 
Fabee, r. w. 
Gerhaedt, Paul. 
Huntingdon, Emily C. 
INGELOW, Jean. 
Jewsburt, M. J. 
Keble, J. 
Lowell, Maria. 
Mackay, James. 



i^EALE, W. E. 

Procter, A. A. 
llossETTi, Christina. 
Sachse, F. 
schmolk, b. 
Stowe, H. B. 
Swain. 
Trench, E. C. 
Uhland. 
Waring, A. L. 
Whittier, J. G. 

WiLKINS, C. 
ZlHN. 




GOD CHASTENETH IN LOVE, 



" God doth not leave His own I 
This sorrow in their life lie doth permit, 

Yea, iiseth it 
To speed His children on their heavenward way, — 
He guides the winds. Faith, Hope, and Love all say, 

God doth not leave his own," 



(1) 




GOD CHASTENETH IN LOVE, 



GOD chastens thee because He loves thee ! 
This trial comes from His own tender, 
loving hand, — His own tender, unchanging 
heart. 

Has bereavement swept thy heart and deso- 
lated thy dwelling? He appointed that cham- 
ber of death ; He opened that tomb because He 
loves thee ! As it is the suffering child of the 
family w^hich claims a mother's deepest affec- 
tions and most tender solicitude, so hast thou at 
this moment embarked on thy side the tender- 
est love and solicitude of a chastening Heav- 
enly Father. He loved thee into this sorrow, 
and He will love thee through it. There is 
nothing capricious in His dealings. Love is 

(3) 



God chasteneth in Love. 



the reason of all He does. There is no drop 
of wrath in that cup thou art called upon to 
drink. "I do believe," says Lady Powers- 
court, " He has purchased these afflictions for 
us as well as everything else. Blessed be His 
name, it is a part of His covenant to visit us 
with the rod." What says our adorable Lord 
himself? The words were spoken, not when 
He was on earth, a sojourner in a sorrowing 
world, but when enthroned amid the glories 
of heaven : "^5 many as I love I rebuke and 
chasten'' 

Believer, rejoice in the thought that the rod, 
the chastening rod, is in the hands of the liv- 
ing, loving Saviour, who died for thee ! Tribu- 
lation is the King's Highway, and yet that 
highway is paved with love. As some flowers 
before shedding their fragrance require to be 
pressed, so does thy God see meet to bruise 
thee. As some birds are said to sing their 
sweetest notes when the thorn pierces their 
bosom, so does He appoint affliction to lacer- 
ate, that thou may St be driven to the wing, 
singing, in thy upward soaring, " My heart is 



God chastcneth in Love, 



fixed, O God, my heart is fixed!" "Those," 
says the heavenly Leighton, " He means to 
make the most resplendent He hath oftenest 
His tools upon." " Our troubles," says another, 
'^ seem in His Word to be ever in His mind. 
Perhaps half the commands and half the prom- 
ises He gives us there are given us as ti'oicbled 
men." 

Be it ours to say, "Lord, I will love Thee, 
not only despite of Thy rod, but because of Thy 
rod." I will rush into the very arms that are 
chastising me ! When Thy voice calls, as to 
Abraham of old, to prepare for bitter trial, be 
it mine to respond, with bounding heart, "Here 
am I !" and to read in the bow which spans my 
darkest cloud, "^'He chastens because he loves ! " 

Macduff. 



GOD liveth ever! 
Wherefore, Soul, despair thou never ! 
Our God is good ; in every place 

His love is known, His help is found ; 
His mighty arm and tender grace 

Brinor gfood from ills that hem us round. 



God chasteneth in Love. 



Easier than we think can He 
Turn to joy our agqny. 
Soul, remember, 'mid thy pains, 
God o'er all forever reigns. 

God liveth ever ! 
Wherefore, Soul, despair thou never ! 
Say, shall He slumber, shall He sleep, 
Who gave the eye its power to see? 
Shall He not hear His children wxep, 
Who made the ear so wondrously? 
God is God ; He sees and hears 
All their troubles, all their tears. 
Soul, forget not, 'mid thy pains, 
God o'er all forever reigns. 

God liveth ever ! 
Wherefore, Soul, despair thou never ! 
Scarce canst thou bear thy cross? Then fly 

To Him where only rest ib sweet ; 
Thy God is great. His mercy nigh. 

His strength upholds the tottering feet. 
Trust Him, for His grace is sure ; 
Ever doth His truth endure ; 



God chastcncth in Love. 



Soul, forget not, in thy pains, 
God o'er all forever reigns. 

God liveth ever ! 
Wherefore, Soul, despair thou never ! 
Those whom the thoughtless world forsakes. 

Who stand bewildered with their woe, 
God gently to His bosom takes, 

And bids them all His fulness know. 
In thy sorrow's swelling flood, 
Own His hand who seeks thy good. 
Soul, forget not, in thy pains, 
God o'er all. forever reigns. 

God liveth ever ! 

Wherefore, Soul, despair thou never ! 

What though thou tread, with bleeding feet, 

A thorny path of grief and gloom? 

Thy God will choose the way most meet 

To lead thee heavenwards, lead thee home ; 

For this life's long night of sadness 

He will give thee peace and gladness. 

Soul, forget not, in thy pains, 

God o'er all forever reigns. 

^iHN. 1682. 



8 God chastencth in Love. 



WE should see not only the hand of God, 
but the hand of our Heavenly Father, 
full of mercy and loving kindness, in all that 
befalls us, whether afflictive or otherwise ; 
and, therefore, should believe it to be best for 
us because it is His will. 

Our own knowledge is so very small, and 
our strength less, that we should not for a 
moment think of taking the general conduct 
of our affairs out of His hands ; shall we then 
wish to alter any particular instance of His 
doing, because it gives us present pain, and 
we cannot see the precise reason for it ? It 
is His doing, therefore it must be right ; and, 
if it be painful. He meant that it should be. It 
may very well be mysterious, for His thoughts 
and ways are incomparably above ours. We 
must be as wise as God, or God as limited in 
comprehension as ourselves, before we can 
understand all the reasons of His providence ; 
but we ought to be sure that He is as faith- 
ful in mercy as He is sovereign in ruling. 



God chastcncth in Love, 



" Clouds and darkness are round about Him ; " 
but "righteousness and judgment are the habi- 
tation of His throne." There is the ground of 
our confidence, and there should be the source 
of our comfort. 

A landsman at sea understands little how 
a vessel is worked ; he sees her often heading 
almost back from her course, making many 
strange and contrary traverses, — sometimes 
stripped of her canvas when all to him seems 
fair; sometimes strong sails set upon her when 
the storm is driving fiercely ; y^X. he trusts in 
the presiding skill, nor would dare to give, 
much less countermand, an order; for, in the 
extremity of his own ignorance, he has the 
comfort of knowing that the pilot knows. So, 
in the hour of gloom let us trust in God, for 
to Him the night shineth as the day ; and what 
to us appears adverse, to Him is the guidance 
of our prosperity. 

He would be an unfaithful physician who 
should spare the caustic, the probe, or the 
knife, because of the patient's shrinking; or 



10 God chasteneth in Love. 

suffer the disease to triumph rather than cause 
a few sickening qualms, which might throw 
off the evil. So should we see in the very 
painfulness of our afflictions a proof that their 
severity was needed for our moral well-being, 
since our merciful Lord, the Good Physician, 
would not unmercifully afflict us. 

A parent would be cruel w^ho should suffer 
his child to put its little hand into the flame ; 
or refuse it nothing that it craved, howxver 
pernicious ; or suffer it to keep what it was 
turning to mischief against itself; or allow it 
the extravagance of passion unchecked by 
chastisement. It is the parent's office to em- 
ploy superior wisdom and larger experience 
for the good of the child, even against its 
rebellious will. So, since God has assured 
us that He is our most merciful and faithful 
Father, we should readily submit to our re- 
straints, deprivations, losses, and sufferings, as 
so many proofs that a wise, unerring love is 
dealing with us in the best manner for our 
profit. 



God chastcncth in Love, ii 

The passenger thanks his pilot when the 

port is safely gained ; the patient rewards his 

physician when his painful cure is effected ; 

the grown-up man looks back with satisfaction 

upon the parental discipline of his youth ; and, 

though we see not the reason of them now, 

we shall bless God, in heaven, and ought to 

bless Him on earth, for all the trials we meet 

along our way there. 

G. W. Bethune. 



FATHER ! Thy faithful love, 
Thy mercy wise and mild, 
Sees what will blessing prove. 

Or what will hurt Thy child. 
And what Thy wise far-seeing 

Doth for Thy children choose. 
Thou bringest into being, 
Nor sufferest them to lose. 

Hope, then, though woes be doubled, 
Hope, and be undismayed ; 

Let not thine heart be troubled. 
Nor let it be afraid. 



12 God chasteneth in Love. 

This prison where thou art, 
Thy God will break it soon, 

And flood with light thy heart 
In His own blessed noon. 

Paul Gerhardt. 



THERE are two inadequate ways of ac- 
counting for this mystery of sorrow. 
One, originating in a zeal for God's justice, 
represents it as invariably the chastisement of 
sin, or, at the least, as correction for fault. 
But, plainly, it is not always such. Joseph's 
griefs were the consequences, not of fault, but 
of rectitude. The integrity which, on some 
unknown occasion made it his duty^ to carry 
his brethren's "evil report" to their father, was 
the occasion of his slavery. The purity of his 
life was the cause of his imprisonment. Fault 
is only a part of the history of this great matter 
of sorrow. Another theor}^, created by zeal 
for God's love, represents sorrow as the ex- 
ception, and happiness as the rule of life. 



God chastcncih in Love, 13 

We are made for enjoyment, it is said ; and, 
on the whole, there is more enjoyment than 
wretchedness. The common idea of Love 
being that w^hich identifies it with a simple 
wish to confer happiness, no wonder that a 
feeble attempt is made to vindicate God, b}^ 
a reduction of the apparent amount of pain. 
Unquestionably, however, love is very differ- 
ent from a desire to shield from pain. Eternal 
Love gives to painlessness a very subordinate 
place in comparison with excellence of char- 
acter. It does not hesitate to secure man's 
spiritual dignity at the expense of the sacrifice 
of his well-being. The solution w^ill not do. 
Let U3 look the truth in the face. "Man is 
born to sorrow as the sparks fly upwards." 
Sorrow^ is not an accident, occurring now^ and 
then; it is the very woof which is woven into 
the w^arp of life. God has created the nerves 
to agonize, and the heart to bleed ; and before 
a man dies, almost every nerve has thrilled 
with pain, and every affection has been wound- 
ed. The account of life w^hich represents it 



14 God chasteneth in Love. 

as probation is inadequate ; so is that which 
regards it chiefly as a system of rewards and 
punishments. The truest account of this mys- 
terious existence seems to be that it is intended 
for the development of the soul's life, for which 
sorrow is indispensable. Every son of man 
who would attain the true end of his being 
must be baptized with<fire. It is the law of 
our humanity, as that of Christ, that we must 
be perfected through suffering. And he who 
has not discerned the Divine Sacredness of 
Sorrow, and the profound meaning which 
is concealed in pain, has yet to learn what 

life is. 

F. W. Robertson. 



IT is a painful thing, that weeding work. 
'^ Every branch in me that beareth fruit. He 
purgeth it that it may bring forth more fruit," 
The keen edge of God's pruning-knife cuts 
sheer through. No weak tenderness stops 
Him whose love seeks goodness, not comfort. 



God chasteneth in Love, 



15 



for His servants. A man's distractions are in 
his wealth, and perhaps fire or failure make 
him bankrupt ; what he feels is God's sharp 
knife. Pleasure has dissipated his heart, and 
a stricken frame forbids his enjoying pleasure ; 
shattered nerves and broken health wear out 
the life of life. Or, perhaps, it comes in a 
sharper, sadder form ; the shaft of death goes 
home — there is heard the wail of danger in 
his household. And then when sickness has 
passed on to hopelessness, and hopelessness 
has passed on to death, the crushed man goes 
into the chamber of the dead; and there, when 
he shuts down the lid upon the coffin of his 
wife or the coffin of his child, his heart begins 
to tell him the meaning of all this. Thorns 
had been growing in his heart, and the sharp 
knife has been at work making room, — but 
by an awful desolation, — tearing up and cut- 
ting down, that the life of God in the soul 

may not be choked. 

F. W. Robertson. 



i6 God chasteneth in Love. 



FLOW on, Thou Fountain of my joy, 
Through all the wilderness ! 
Thou seest what will work for good. 

Thou knowest how to bless. 
Get Thyself glory, O my God, 
Be praised in my distress ! 

Oh, let Thy true, refining love 

Its utmost pleasure see ; 
And lift not up Thy faithful hand, 

Whate'er my cry may be, 
Till I am strong for Thy renown, 

And pure for use to Thee. 

I know Thine eye has weighed the path 

To Thy lost creature's bliss ; 
No comfort could supply the need 

Of grief so sore as this ; 
No joy could wake my heart so well 

To Thy full preciousness. 

Thou wast the Source of all that love 
Which makes me glad no more, 

And Thou hast taken to Thyself 
What was Thine own before. 



God chastencth in Love, 17 

Thine, and mine, too, O good to give, — 

faithful to restore. 

That loving spirit is withdrawn 

From every shade of sin ; 
And I, in sympathy with her, 

A holier life begin. 
Yes ! to her new delight in Thee, 

I, Lord, can enter in. 

She with Thee, wheresoe'er Thou art, 

In fellowship untold ! 
She in Thee, living by my Bread, 

My Hope, my heart's stronghold ! 
Oh I 'tis a song for days of grief. 

Whatever their depths unfold. 

As one whose mother comforts him, 

1 will lift up my head ; 

No wound of Thine shall take the life 

From words which Thou hast said ; 

And in the fulness of Thy truth 

I shall be comforted. 

A. L. Waring. 

2 



t8 God chasteneth in Love. 



BEREAVED mourner! do you feel it a 
difficult thing, in the dark hour of sor- 
row, to say, "Thy will be done," from the 
heart, and to bow in meek submission to the 
appointment of your Heavenly Father? Oh, 
deem it not strange ! It is hard and difficult 
to bid a last farewell to the loved — the cher- 
ished ; hard to wander through scenes and 
places where you w^ere wont to hear the voice 
of affection, and grasp the hand of true and 
tried friendship ; hard to realize that never 
again on earth will you listen to accents which 
once fell so sweetly on the ear, or gaze upon 
that countenance which ever beamed with fond 
regard towards you. An eminent servant of 
God, now at rest in heaven, thus describes the 
anguish he felt in the loss of a beloved son : 
'^ I often find myself, when alone, literally cry- 
ing out for him, and moved to stretch out my 
arms as if I could embrace him." And such, 
afflicted one, may be the anguish of your 
heart. 



God chasteneth in Love. 19 

Still, be assured, the trying dispensation was 
fiecdful. He, who loves you more tenderly 
than any earthly friend, sent it to draw your 
heart upwards to Himself; sent it to lead you, 
with child-like dependence, to trust your all to 
Him, — for joy or sorrow, — for health or sick- 
ness, — for time or eternity. He desires, by 
this affliction, to conform your will more and 
more to His, — to increase your love of holi- 
ness, and to render you, in a higher degree, 
its possessor, — to strengthen your faith, in- 
flame your love, animate your hope, and, in 
the end, confirm your joy. Think not that, 
because the gloom of death surrounds you, — 
because your heart is now lacerated and bleed- 
ing, — the love, the tenderness, of your Heav- 
enly Father is withdrawn. " As many as I 
love, I rebuke and chasten," is the divine as- 
surance. " They that sow in tears shall reap in 
joy." Indulge no dark, desponding thoughts. 
Imagine not, that because the clouds have 
gathered round you, the sky will never again 
be clear, or that the sun will never again 



20 God chasteneth in Love. 

shine upon your pathway. " All the paths 
of the Lord are mercy and truth to them that 
truly love Him." In this your night of grief. 
He says to. you, as to all His children, "Who 
is among you that feareth the Lord and obey- 
eth the voice of His servant, though he w^alk 
in darkness, and have no light ? let him trust 
in the name of the Lord, and stay himself 
upon his God." 

Oh ! do not resist or struggle against your 
Heavenly Father, but strive to yield yourself 
meekly and humbly to His w^ill ; hear the rod 
and Him who appointed it; pray that He 
would hallow your trial, whatever it may be ; 
that He would give you grace patiently and 
contentedly to bear what He has laid upon 
you,, so that, day by day, you may receive the 
impress of the likeness of the ever Blessed 
Saviour, and become meet for the heavenly 
inheritance. 

Reflect, too, that submission is pleasing in 
your Heavenly Father's sight. The sooner 



God chastcncth in Love, 21 

you acquire the spirit of a child, the sooner 
will the cross, the trial, the suffering, be both 
sanctified and removed. Not that you are 
to try to bear with patience, in order to be 
free from chastisement, but because you will 
be doing that which is pleasing to Him ; and 
when you do. He will enable you to "rejoice 
with exceeding joy." He knows the weight 
and duration of your sorrows and trials. He 
sees the end from the beginning, and the 
happy issue out of all your afflictions, which 
he has in store for you. Trust Him implicit- 
ly, submit to Him cheerfully, and you will 
find that all shall yet be well, — that more 
grace will be given you, — that the heavier 
the trial the larger w^ill be the measure of 
strength. No sorrow has been mingled in 
your cup, no thorn has been scattered on your 
path, no grief has oppressed your spirit, but 
what is common to the whole family of God. 
The Shepherd is leading you by a circuitous 
path, but in the right way, to His own blessed 



22 God chasteneth in Love. 

fold. Leave all to Him — to His faithfulness, 
His love, His power, His watchful, sleepless 
care. Let your song be — 

" He led me through the wilderness, 
A long and lonely way; 
He soothed me with His tenderness, 

And fed me day by day. 
Oh, better far the wilderness 

And desert way to me, 
If, wandering in its loneliness, 
I should be nearer Thee ! '* 

J. A. Mackenzie. 




TRUST IN GOD. 



If thou couldst trusty poor soul, 
In Him who rules the whole, 
Thou wouldst find peace and rest; 
Wisdom and sight are well, but Trust is best. 

A. A. Procter. 



(ZS) 




TRUST IN GOD, 



A WIDOW related, in the following lan- 
guage, her sad, yet, in another view of 
it, her happy experience, to a minister who 
visited her : — 

"My husband died, and then disease seized 
on my children, and they were taken one by 
one. In the course of a few years, I had laid 
those in whom my heart was bound up, in the 
grave. Oh, they were many, many bitter tears 
that I shed ! The world w^as dark. The very 
voice of consolation was a pain. I could sit 
by the side of my friend, but could not hear 
him speak of my departed ones. My affliction 
was too deep to be shared. It seemed as if 
God himself had deserted me. I was alone. 

(25) 



26 Trust in God. 



The places at the table and the fireside re- 
mained, but they who filled them were gone. 
Oh, the loneliness, as it had been a tomb, of 
my chamber ! How blessed was sleep ! .for 
then the dead lived again. They were all 
around me. My youngest child, and last, sat 
on my knee ; she leaped up in my arms ; 
she uttered my name with infant joyousness ; 
and that sweet tone was as if an angel had 
spoken to my sad soul. But the dream van- 
ished, and the dreary morning broke, and I 
waked, and prayed, — and I sought forgive- 
ness, even while I uttered it, for my unholy 
prayer, — prayed that God would let me lie 
down in the grave, side by side with my chil- 
dren and husband. 

" But better thoughts came. In my grief I 
remembered, that though my loved ones were 
separated from me, the same Father — the 
same Infinite Love — watched over them as 
when they were by my fireside. We were 
divided, but only for a season. And by de- 
grees my grief grew calmer. But since then 



Trust in God. 27 



my thoughts have been more in that world 
where they have gone than in this. I do not 
remember less, but I look forward and upward 
more. I learned the worth of prayer and re- 
liance. Would that I could express to every 
mourner how the sting is taken away from 
the grief of one, who with a true and full 
heart, puts her trust in God. I can never 
again go into the gay world. The pleasures 
of this world are no longer pleasures to me. 
But I have trust, and hope, and confidence. I 
know that my Redeemer liveth. I know that 
God ever watches over His children. And 
in my desolation, this faith of heart has long 
enabled me to feel a different kind of pleasure 
indeed, but a far deeper, though more sober 
joy, than the pleasures of this world ever 
gave me, even when youth, and health, and 
friends all conspired to give them their keen- 
est relish." 

"You have learned in your own heart," I 
said, "that all trials are not evils." 

It was with eyes upturned to heaven, and 



28 Trust in God, 



gushing over with tears, — not tears of sorrow, 
but gratitude, — and with a radiant counte- 
nance, that she answered, in a tone so mild, 
so rapt, as if her heart were speaking to her 
God, "It has been good for me that I have 

been afflicted." 

John Angell James. 



THERE IS a land where beauty cannot fade. 
Nor sorrow dim the eye ; 
Where true love shall not droop nor be dismayed, 

And none shall ever die ! 

Where is that land, — Oh, where? 

For I would hasten there ! 

Tell me, — I fam v/ould go, — 
For I am wearied with a heavy woe ! 
The beautiful have left me all alone : 
The true, the tender, from my paUi are gone ! 

Oh, guide me with thy hand, 

If thou dost know the land. 
For I am burdened with oppressive care, 
And I am we^dc and fearful with despair ! 

Where is it? tell me, where? 
Thou that art kind and gentle, tell me, where? 



Trust in God, 29 



Friend, thou must trust in Him who trod before 

The desolate paths of life ; 
Must bear in meekness, as He meekly bore, 

Sorrow, and pain, and strife ! 

Think how the Son of God 

These thorny paths hath trod ; 

Think how He longed to go. 
Yet tarried out for thee the aj^pointed woe : 
Think of His weariness in places dim. 
When no man comforted nor cared for Him! 

Think of the blood, like sweat. 

With which His brow was wet, 
Yet how He prayed, unaided and alone. 
In that great agony, " Thy will be done." 

Friend, do not thou despair, 
Christ, from His heaven of heavens will hear thy 



prayer ! 



From the German of Uhland. 



TTAVE you ever seen, so as to know how 
A -■- dreary a spectacle it is, the trust in 
Heaven trampled out of a soul, instead of being 
strengthened by the tortures of grief ? Have 
you ever felt in yourself, in some moment of 



30 Trust in God. 



darkness, a passing fear that an impending 
sorrow would be too much for your spirit to 
sustain? Have you ever felt the painful and 
guilty doubt, whether you have been carried 
up to a loftier plane of life, and holier states, 
by 3' our past afflictions? 

The first demand of the soul,, under such 
an ordeal, is to realize that its suffering has 
an object. We commonly think we could 
endure trouble with composure, if we could 
only see what is to be accomplished by endur- 
ing it. Why — why is it ? is the question 
that haunts the aching breast, and disturbs its 
submission. We must be. content to suffer, 
without an answer to that question. This is 
the trial of faith. If a full answer were to 
be given, there would be no room for faith. 
Who am I, that I should require the Infinite 
and Eternal One to assign me reasons for his 
counsel ! ''What I do, thou knowest not now, 
but thou shalt know hereafter," is explanation 
enough to my impatient curiosity. That is 
what God demands of faith to feel. 



Trust in God. 31 



When the smart and the load of fresh afflic- 
tions are not upon us, we are able to feel it, 
perhaps, quite easily. But how, when the 
nerves are torn, and the separation has come; 
when the dead body lies in the next room, 
and the tones of the silenced voice yet linger 
in our ears, and the sense of bereavement 
presses in through every pore of the heart ? 
Can we realize it then ? 

In such particular cases of suffering we have 
to fall back, I think, on some reserved fund 
of faith accumulated in calmer moments. On 
your way to your child's or your husband's 
burial, you are not expected to generalize, nor 
to reason, nor to draw philosophical deduc- 
tions from a wide circle of facts. God will 
not be angry if you fail to see, just in that 
bewildered paroxysm of grief, how it is well 
for 3"ou to be so stricken. Yet you can say 
to yourself even then, in the midst of your 
tears, " It is well ; somehow it is well ; it 
must be wise^ and right, and merciful." That 
will be both the trial and the triumph of faith. 



32 Trust in God. 



And if you have noticed, looking back over 
your past experience, or out among your com- 
panions, that sorrow is the chief producer of 
human goodness on the whole, and crosses 
are the mightiest instruments of spiritual puri- 
ty on the whole, you are held to apply that 
general conviction of your reason to this spe- 
cial instance of affliction. If it is a law that 
a stormy air nurses your moral vigor, you 
must abide by that law while the storm beats 
in, and the waves are high, as bravely as in 

sunshine and still seas. 

F. D. Huntington. 



THE way is long and dreary, 
The path is bleak and bare ; 
Our feet are worn and weary, 
But we will not despair. 
More heavy was Thy burden, 
More desolate Thy way ; — 
O Lamb of God ! who takest 
The sin of the world away, 

Have mercy on us. 



Trust in God, 33 



The snows lie thick around us,. 
In the dark and gloomy night ; 
And the tempest wails above us, 
And the stars have hid their light ; 
But blacker was the darkness 
Round Calvary's Cross that day ; — 
O Lamb of God ! who takest 
The sin of the world away, 

Have mercy on us. 



Our hearts are faint with sorrow 
Heavy and hard to bear, 
For we dread the bitter morrow, 
But we wnll not despair : 
Thou knowest all our anguish. 
And Thou wilt bid it cease ; — 
O Lamb of God ! who takest 
The sin of the world away, 

Give us TJiy Peace, 

A. A. Procter. 



34 Trust in God, 



GET an assurance that Christ is yours, 
and pardon of sin yours, and Divine 
favor yours, and heaven yours, and the sense 
of this will exceedingly quiet and silence the 
soul under the sorest and sharpest trials a 
Christian can meet w^ith in this world. He 
that is assured that God is his portion will 
never mutter nor murmur under his greatest 
burdens. He that can say, " Nothing shall 
separate me from the love of God in Christ," 
will be able to triumph in the midst of the 
greatest tribulations. He that with the spouse 
can say, '^ My Beloved is mine, and I am His," 
will bear up quietly and sweetly under the 
heaviest afflictions. In the time of the Mari- 
an persecution, there was a gracious woman, 
who being convened before bloody Bonner, 
then bishop of London, upon the trial of reli- 
gion, he threatened her that he would take 
away her husband from her; saith she, "Christ 
is my husband." "I will take away thy 
child." "Christ," saith she, ''is better to me 



Trust in God. 35 



than ten sons. "I will strip thee," saith he, 
"of all thy outward comforts." "Yea, but 
Christ is mine," saith she, " and you cannot 
strip me of Him." The assurance that Christ 
was hers bore up her heart, and quieted her 
spirit under all. "You may take away my 
life," saith Basil, "but you cannot take away 
my comfort; my head, but not m}^ crown; 
yea," said he, " had I a thousand lives, I 
would lay them all down for my Saviour's 
sake, who hath done abundantly more for 
me." John Ardley professed to Bonner, when 
he told him of burning, and how ill he could 
endure it, " that if he had as many lives as 
he had hairs on his head, he would lose them 
all in the fire before he would lose his Christ." 
Assurance will keep a man from murmuring 
and muttering under the sorest afflictions. 
Henry and John, two Augustine monks, being 
the first that were burnt in German}^ and 
Mr. Rogers, the first that was burnt in Queen 
Mary's days, did all rejoice in the flames. 
A soul that lives under the assurance of Di- 



36 Trust in God. 



vine favor, and in its title to glory, cannot but 
bear up patiently and quietly under the great- 
est sufferings that possibly can befall it in this 

world. 

Thomas Brooks. 1669. 



ALL things that have been, all that are, 
All things that can be dreamed ; 
All possible creations made, 
Kept faithful, or redeemed, — 

All these may draw upon Thy power, 

Thy mercy may command ; 
And still outflows Thy silent sea, 

Immutable and grand. 

Oh, little heart of mine ! shall pain 

Or sorrow make thee moan. 
When all this God is all for thee, 

A Father all thine own? 

Faber. 



Trust in God. 37 



FRET not, poor soul ; while doubt and fear 
Disturb thy breast, 
The pitying angels, who can see 
How vain thy wild regret must be, 
Say, Trust and Rest. 

Plan not, nor scheme, but calmly wait ; 

His choice is best. 
While blind and erring is thy sight. 
His wisdom sees and judges right. 

So Trust and Rest. 

Strive not nor struggle ; thy poor might 

Can never wTest 
The meanest thing to serve thy will ; 
All power is His alone : Be still, 

And Trust and Rest. 

Desire not: self-love is strong 

Within thy breast; 
And yet He loves thee better still ; 
So let Him do His loving will, 

And Trust and Rest. 



38 Trust in God, 



What dost thou fear? His wisdom reigns, 

Supreme confessed ; 

His power is infinite ; His love 

Thy deepest, fondest dreams above : 

So Trust and Rest. 

A. A. Procter. 



OH, my friends, we should all be contented 
and happy, if we did not enter upon 
life, making upon it so many unw^arrantable 
claims. We demand of life enjoyment, as our 
right ; hence we . are not grateful for it when 
it is given us out of grace ; hence, moreover, 
when God denies it, our froward heart thinks 
it is entitled to murmur. Christians, forget 
not, I beseech you, that you have come into 
this life, to the end, not that ye might enjoy 
it, but that in it ye might be trained for another 
and a better life. Now, you think it a strange 
thing that days of darkness should ever cross 
your path ; but if you held fast this truth, and 
bore constantly in mind that you are upon the 
earth in order to be educated here for heaven, 



Trust in God, 39 



ye would rather expect your present lot to be 
one of tribulation and suffering, according to 
those words of Peter, when he says, "Belov- 
ed, count it not strange concerning the fiery 
trial which is to try you, but rejoice, inasmuch 
as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings." 

Oh, how painless do all the thorns of afflic- 
tion become when one views them as forming 
a portion of His crown of thorns ; how much 
more easily is every burden borne which one 
regards as part of the cross of Christ; and 
the fainting soul cries " I thirst," with a less 
heavy heart when it knows that it is only 
echoing back the voice of its dying Saviour ! 
But remember, if we would understand the 
mystery of the fellowship of his sufferings, it 
is, above all things, necessary that we love 
Him, for it is only love that knows how to 
rejoice in the blessed sympathy of suffering. 

Children of affliction, ye are too feeble ! 
Doubtless it is human for a man to seek to 
share his sorrow with one he loves. And, 
therefore, our Lord Himself had an hour 



40 Trust in God. 



when He could say to His faithful disciples, 
" My soul is sorrowful, even unto death," and 
could ask them to watch and pray with Him. 
But those men were the men of the Saviour's 
heart, and even their sympathy He sought for 
only one hour. The rest of the time He 
spoke of His sorrow alone with His God. Oh, 
beloved, ye make too much of your afflictions 
in saying- so much about them to men, and 
so little to God. It is because people will 
not learn to suffer in silence before the Lord, 
that one trial after another comes to many a 
soul, without affecting it any more than the 
stones of the street are affected by the sun 
and the rain. This is the real cause of our 
afflictions bearing so little fruit. You must 
learn to understand the meaning of these 
words : " Possessing the soul in quietness before 
the Lord,"" Do you know what Luther says? 
" Suffer, and be still ; tell no man thy sorrow ; 
trust in God, His help will not fail thee.'' 
This is what Scripture calls " keeping silence 
before God." To talk much of one's afflic- 



Trust in God, 41 



tions to men makes one weak and unmanly ; 

but to tell one's sorrow to Him who seeth in 

secret makes one strong and calm. Your 

fire of tribulation is like a flickering flame, 

which the wind drives to and fro ; but carry it 

in secret before the Lord, and it w^ill become 

a fire of sacrifice, which will peacefully ascend 

to heaven. 

Tholuck. 



I LOVE, and love not : Lord, it breaks my heart 
To love and not to love. 
Thou, veiled within Thy glory, gone apart 

Into Thy shrine, which is above, 
Dost Thou not love me. Lord, or care 

For this mine ill? — 
I love thee here or there; 

I will accept thy broken hearty — lie still. 

Lord, it was well with me in time gone by, 

That Cometh not again. 
When I was fresh and cheerful — who but I? 

I fresh, I cheerful ; worn with pain. 



42 Trust in God, 



Now, out of sight and out of heart ; 

Lord, how long? — 
/ watch thee as thou art ; 

1 will accept thy fainting hearty — be strong, 

" Lie still ! " '' Be strong ! " to-day ; but, Lord, to- 
morrow. 

What of to-morrow, Lord? 
Shall there be rest from toil, be truce from sorrow. 

Be living green upon the sward, 
Now but a barren grave to me, — 

Be joy for sorrow? — 
Did 1 7tot die for thee? 

Do I 7iot live for thee? leave Me to-inorrow, 

Christina Rossetti. 



WE may assert that there cannot be 
imagined, much less found, the dark- 
ness, in passing through which there is no 
promise of Scripture by which yoM may be 
cheered. We care not what it is which hath 
woven the darkness ; we are sure that God 
has made provision for his people's exulting 



Trust in God. 43 



rather than lamenting, as the gloom gathers 
round them and settles over them. 

Let us take the case of most frequent oc- 
currence, but of which frequency diminishes 
nothing of the bitterness. We mean the case 
of the loss of friends — the case in which death 
makes way into a family, and carries off one 
of the most beloved of its members. It is 
night — deep night — in a household whereso- 
ever this occurs. When the loss is of another 
kind, it may admit of repair. Property may 
be injured ; some cherished plan may be frus- 
trated ; but industry may be again successful, 
and hope may fix its eye on other objects. 
But when those whom we love best die, there 
is no comfort of this sort with w^hich we can 
be comforted. For a time, at least, the loss 
seems irreparable ; so that, though the wound- 
ed sensibilities may afterwards be healed, and 
even turn to the living as they turned to the 
dead, yet, whilst the calamity is fresh, we 
repulse, as injurious, the thought that the void 
in our affections can ever be filled, and are 



44 Trust in God, 

persuaded that the blank in the domestic group 
can be occupied by nothing but the hallowed 
memory of the buried. It is, therefore, night 
in the household, darkness, — a darkness that 
may be felt. And philosophy comes in, with 
its w^ell-meant but idle endeavors, to console 
those who sit in this darkness. It can speak 
of the unavoidableness of death, of the duty 
of bearing with manly fortitude what cannot 
be escaped; of the injuriousness of excessive 
grief; and it may even hazard a conjecture 
of reunion in some world beyond the grave. 
Pleasure approaches w^ith its allurements and 
fascinations, offering to cheat the mind into 
forgetfulness, and wile the heart from its sad- 
ness. But neither philosophy nor pleasure 
can avail anything in the chamber of death ; 
the taper of the one is too faint for so oppres- 
sive a gloom, and the torch of the other burns 
sickly in so unwonted an atmosphere. Is, 
then, the darkness such that those whom it 
envelopes are incapable of being comforted ? 
Oh, not so. There maybe those amongst your- 



Trust in God, 45 



selves who can testify that even in a nigL so 
dreary and desolate there is a source whence 
consolation may be drawn. The promises of 
Scripture are never more strikingly fulfilled 
than when death has made an inroad, and 
taken away, at a stroke, some object of deep 
love. Indeed, it is God's own word to the 
believer, "I will be with him in trouble" — 
as though that presence, which can never be 
withdrawn, then became more real and in- 
tense. 

What are we to say of cases which continu- 
ally present themselves to the parochial min- 
ister? He enters a house whose darkened 
windows proclaim that one of its inmates is 
stretched out a corpse. He finds that it is the 
fairest and dearest whom Death has made his 
prey, and that the blow has fallen where sure 
to be most deeply felt. And he is prepared 
for the burst of bitter sorrows. ' He knows 
that the heart, when most purified by grace, 
is made of feeling stuff; for grace, which re- 
moves the heart of stone, and substitutes that 



46 



Trust in God, 



lesh, 



of ^esh, will refine rather than extinguish 
human sensibilities. But what words does he 
hear from lips whence nothing but lamentation 
might have been expected to issue ? " The 
Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; 
blessed be the name of the Lord." 

And when, a few days after, the slow wind- 
ings of the funeral procession are seen, and 
the minister advances to meet the train, and 
pours forth the rich and inspiriting words, " I 
am the Resurrection and the Life ; he that 
belie veth in me, though he were dead, yet 
shall he live," is it only the low murmur of 
suppressed anguish by which he is answered? 
Can he not feel that there are those in the 
group whose hearts bound at the magnificent 
announcement? and, as he looks at the mourn- 
ers, does he not gather, from the uplifted eye 
and the moving lip, that there is one at least 
who is triumphing in the fulfillment of the pre- 
diction, "O Death, I will be thy plagues! O 
Grave, I will be thy destruction ! " ? 

And what are we to say to these things ? 



Trtcst in God. 47 



what but that in the deepest darkness there 
can be music — music which sounds softer and 
sweeter than by day ; and that when the in- 
struments of human melody are broken, there 
is a hand which can sweep the heart-strings 
and wake the notes of praise. Yes, philoso- 
phy can communicate no comfort to the afflict- 
ed ; it may enter where all is night ; but it 
leaves what it found, even weeping and wail- 
ing. And pleasure may take the lyre, whose 
strains have often seduced and enchanted ; 
but the worn and wearied spirit has no ear, in 
the gloom, for what sounded magically when 
a thousand liglits were blazing. But religion, 
— faith in the promises of that God who is 
the Husband of the widow and the Father of 
the fatherless, — this can cause the sorrowing 
to be glad in the midst of their sorrow ; for it 
is a description which every believer will con- 
fess borne out by experience, that God, our 

Maker, " giveth songs in the night." 

Melvill. 



48 Trust in God, 



THE face which, duly as the sun, 
Rose up for me with life begun, 
To mark all bright hours of the clay 
With hourly love, is dimmed away, — 
And yet my days go on — go on. 

The tongue which, like a stream, could run 
Smooth music from the roughest stone. 
And every morning, with '' Good day," 
Make each day good, is hushed away, — 
And yet my days go on — go on. 

The heart w^hich, like a staff, was one 
For mine to lean and rest upon, — 
The strongest on the longest day, — 
With steadfast love, is caught away, — 
And yet my days go on — go on. 

And cold before my summer's done. 
And deaf in Nature's general tune, 
And fallen too low for special fear. 
And here, with hope no longer here, — 
While the tears drop, my days go on. 



Trust 111 God, 49 



The world goes whispering to its own, 
" This anguish pierces to the bone ; " 
And tender friends go sighing round, 
"What love can ever cure this wound?" 
My days go on — my days go on. 

The past rolls forward on the sun, 
And makes all night. O dreams begun, 
Not to be ended ! Ended bliss, 
And life that will not end in this ! 
My days go on — my days go on. 

Breath freezes on my lips to moan ; 
As one alone, once not alone, 
I sit and knock at Nature's door, 
Heart-bare, heart-hungry, very poor, 
Whose desolated days go on. 

I knock, and cry, ''Undone — undone!" 
Is there no help, no comfort — none? 
No gleaning in the wide wheat-plains, . 
Where others drive their loaded wains? 
My vacant days go on — go on. 



5o Trust in God, 



A voice reproves me thereupon, 

More sw^eet than Nature's w^hen the drone 

Of bees is sweetest, and more deep 

Than vv^hen the rivers overleap 

The shuddering pines, and thunder on. 

God's voice, not Nature's. Night and noon 
He sits upon the great white throne. 
And listens for the creature's praise. 
What tattle w^e of days and days? 
The Dayspring He, wdiose days go on. 

He reigns above, He reigns alone ; 
Systems burn out and leave His throne ; 
Fair mists of seraphs melt and fall 
Around Him, changeless amid all, — 
Ancient of Days, w^hose days go on. 

He reigns below, He reigns alone, 
And, having life in love foregone 
Beneath the crown of sorrow-thorns, 
He reigns the jealous God. Who mourns 
Or rules with Him, while days go on? 



Trust in God, 51 



By anguish which made pale the sun, 
I hear Him charge His saints that none 
x\mong His creatures, anywhere, 
Blaspheme against Him with despair, 
However darkly days go on. 

Take from my head the thorn-wreath brown ; 
No mortal grief deserves that crown. 

supreme Love ! chief Misery ! 
The sharp regalia is for Thee, 
Whose days eternally go on ! 

For us — whatever's undergone, 
Thou knowest, wiliest what is done ; 
Grief may be joy misunderstood ; 
Only the good discerns the good. 

1 trust Thee while my days go on. 

Whatever's lost, it first was won : 

We will not struggle nor impugn : 

Perhaps the cup was broken here, 

That Heaven's new wine might show more clear 

I praise Thee while my days go on. 



52 



Trust m God, 



I praise Thee while my days go on ; 

I love Thee while my days go on : 

Through dark and dearth, through fire and frost, 

With emjDtied arms and treasure lost, 

I thank Thee while my days go on. 

And having in Thy life-depth thrown 
Being and suffering (which are one). 
As a child drops his pebble small 
Down some deep well, and hears it fall, 
Smiling, — sol. Thy days go on. 

Mrs. E. B. Browning. 




THE SYMPATHIZING FRIEND, 



"When Sorrow's gloomy path I tread, 
And threatening clouds meet o'er my head, 
I'll onward go without a fear. 
If only Jesus' voice I hear : 
Even then the darkness L'ght shall be, 
If there my Saviour meet with me." 



(53) 




THE SYMPATHIZING FRIEND. 



HOW near and how lovely a Friend is 
Christ ! Man needs such a Friend. The 
heart is formed for sympathy. In its joys, in 
its sorrows, in its affections, it retires ever to 
the innermost circle, and there, in the dear 
companionship of one tried friend, unbosoms 
itself, and gives to its emotions their utmost 
play. Without such a resource the heart is 
lonely and wretched indeed. How blessed, 
then, is that presentation of Christ, which 
places Him within that innermost circle, which 
enshrines Him in the very heart itself, nearer 
than the nearest earthly friend, and which 
keeps Him there unchanged, in all the ful- 
ness and tenderness of human sympathy, and 

(55) 



56 The Symj^athizing Friend. 

with all the strength and consolation of divine 
grace, when that innermost circle is made 
vacant, and the heart finds no outward sup- 
port for its torn and bleeding tendrils. Let 
me then accustom myself to the thought of 
Christ as a present, personal Friend ; let me 
learn to confide in Him as fully and as freely 
as in the dearest earthly confidant ; — nay, 
more, to tell Him of all my wants, my ternp- 
tations, my suflTerings, my cares, my griefs, 
my infirmities ; — ■ to tell Him of these without 
one distrustful thotJght of His kind, sympathiz- 
ing interest, or of His ability and His willing- 
ness to help in every time of need. Above 
all, let me ever keep His friendship, by avoid- 
ing whatever is displeasing to Him, and by 
devoting my whole heart to His service. Oh, 
the misery of being without such a Friend ; to 
live in a world where all other friends must 
fail, where life itself must fail, and have no 
interest in this Almighty, Everlasting Friend ! 

J. P. Thompson. 



The Sympathizing Friend, 57 



GOING to the grave, to loose the bands 
of death, the Son of God bedews the 
path with tears. He takes Martha and Mary 
to his breast ; He bears their grief and carries 
their sorrow, and, groaning and sobbing all 
the way. He supports their tottering footsteps. 
The Jews, moved at the scene, exclaim, ^"^ Be- 
hold how He loved hini!'^ And now they are 
at the sepulchre ; the grief of the bereaved 
sisters here breaks forth uncontrollably, and 
Jesus again groans as He carries their sor- 
rows ; He yields Himself to all the gushing 
sympathies of His own heart, though by a 
word He could, as soon He will, stay every 
grief. Why went the Master thus sorrowing 
to the grave? Why wept He then, who wept 
not under the cruel scourging, or along His 
own via dolorosa ? Why wept He when about 
to raise the dead, but to assure thee, my soul, 
of sympathy in thy tears for those whom He 
will not yet give back to thee from the grave? 
Thou Blessed Lord, dost Thbu bear my griefs 



58 The Sympathizing Friend. 

and carry my sorrows? And may I look to 
Thee, not only upon Calvary my Saviour from 
sin, but here in my solitary chamber, there 
by the new-made sepulchre, ever in my deso- 
late heart my tearful Friend, my sympathiz- 
ing Comforter? Blessed Jesus, Thou dost not 
chide my tears ; Thou dost bear my griefs and 

carry my sorrow. 

J. P. Thompson. 



FORTH from the city gate, 
As evening shadows lengthen o'er the plain, 
And the hushed crowd in reverent silence wait, 
Passed out a funeral train. 

Only one mourner there, 
Slovdy, with feeble steps, following the dead ; 
In the sad travail of the soul's despair. 

Bowed down her stricken head. 

For him she wept forlorn. 
Of care the solace, and of age the stay. 
Whose silver cord was broken ere the morn 

Had brightened into day. 



The Sympathizing Friend, 59 

Thus hath it ever been, — 
Time, the destroyer, sweeps relentless by 
When hopes are strong, and leaves of promise green. 

And manhood's heart beats high. 

Who comes, of stately mien. 
As one with travel weary, seeking rest, 
Whose aspect gentle, and whose brow serene, 

Speak of a mission blest? 

'Tis He, with powder to save. 
Who, where desponding grief his vigil kept. 
Knowing all human sufferings, at the grave 

Of Lazarus wept. 

Thus spake He : " Weep no more ! 
Be still, sad heart! Be dry, ye moistened eyes! 
Thus to the living I the dead restore ! 

Sleeper, awake, arise ! " 

Then, at His bidding came 
To those cold lips the warm, returning breath, 
Then did He 'kindle life's extinguished flame, 

Victor o'er sin and death. 



6o The Sympathizing Friend. 

And thus He ever stands, — 
Friend of the fallen, wiphig all tears away, 
Wherever Sorrow^ lifts her suppliant hands, 

And Faith remains to pray. 

Where'er the wa'etched flee, 
From the rude conflict of this vs^orld distrest. 
Consoling w^ords He v^^hispers, — ''Come to Me, 

And I will give you rest ; " 

Till, at the second birth. 
He bids the woes and wrongs of ages cease, 
And brings to an emancipated earth, 

Judgment, and truth, and peace ; 

And gathers all His own 
From the four winds to that eternal shore. 
Where Mercy sits upon the great white throne, 

And death shall be no more. 

W. R. Neale. 



The Sympathizing F7'iend, 6i 



THE sympathy of man is cheering and 
comforting; but '^thus far shalt thou go, 
and no further/' It is finite, Hmited, — often 
selfish. There are nameless and numberless 
sorrows on earth, beyond the reach of all hu- 
man alleviation. 

The sympathy of Jesus is alone exalted, 
pure, infinite, — removed from all taint of self- 
ishness. He has Himself passed through every 
experience of woe. There are no depths 
of sorrow or anguish into which I can be 
plunged, but His everlasting arms are lower 
still. 

" He was in all -points tempted." Blessed 
assurance ! I never can know the sorrow into 
which the " Man of Sorrows " cannot enter. 
Ah, rather in the midst of earth's most lacer- 
ating trials, let me listen to the unanswerable 
challenge from the lips of a suflfering Saviour, 
"Was there ever any sorrow like unto my 
sorrow ? " Yet He refused not to drink the 
cup of wrath ! He shrunk not back from the 



62 The Sympathizing Friend, 

appointed cross ! " He set his face steadfastly 
to go to Jerusalem ; " and even when He hung 
upon the bitter tree. He refused the vinegar 
that vi^ould have assuaged the rage of thirst 
and mitigated physical suffering. Are we 
tempted at times to murmur under God's af- 
flicting hand? "Consider Him that endured, 
. . . . lest ye be weary and faint in your 
minds." Shall we hesitate to bear any trial 
our Lord and Master sees meet to lay upon 
us, when w^e think of the infinitely weightier 
cross He so meekly and unrepiningly carried 
for us? 

I commend you to God, and to the word of 
His grace. I commend you, above all, to the 
tenderness of that human sympathy which 
exists alone in Jesus. Angels and archangels, 
never having had sorrow, cannot sy^nfathize. 
The glorious Being before whom they cast 
their crowns can, for sorrow tracked His foot- 
steps from the manger to the grave. 

We never can understand the depth and 
preciousness of His sympathy until w^e come 



The Sympathizing Fi'icnd. 63 

to need it. "I have had a deep, a very deep 

wound," says Lady Powerscourt ; "the trial 

has been very severe ; but how should I have 

known Him as a brother born for adversity 

without it? He has gone through every class 

in our wilderness-school. He seems intent to 

fill up every gap love has been forced to make. 

One of His errands from heaven was to ^bind 

up the broken-hearted.' Let your trial only 

endear Him to you more and more. Though 

earthly ties have been severing, He still ^ lives 

and loves.' " " She was," said good old Philip 

Henry, when writing of Lady Puleston, who 

died in 1658, "she was the best friend I had 

on earth, but my Friend in heaven is still 

where He was, and He will never leave me 

nor forsake me." 

Macduff. 



64 The Sympathizing Friend, 



THE secret pangs I could not- tell 
To dearest friend, Thou knowest well ; 
They claim Thy gracious heart ; 
Thou dost remove with tender care, 
Or sweetly give me strength to bear 
The sanctifying smart. 

Thy presence has a wondrous power ; 
The sharpest thorn becomes a flower, 

And breathes a sweet perfume ; 
Whatever looked dark and sad before, 
With happy light shines silvered o'er, — 

There's no such thing as gloom ! 



Thou knowest I have a cross to bear ; 
The needful stroke Thou dost not spare 

To keep me near Thy side ; 
But when I see the chastening rod 
In Thy pierced hand, my Lord, my God, 

I feel so satisfied ! 

C. WiLKINS. 



The Sympathizing Friend. 65 



"/^^OME unto me, all ye that labor and are 
^^ heavy laden, and I will give you rest." 
Oh, mark that, — the heavy laden! No mat- 
ter what may be the burden, whether of sin, 
or of care, or of sorrow, there is rest from it 
in Christ. If you look to Him by faith to take 
away the burden of your sin. He will lighten 
every other load that presses upon your spirit. 
Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the lost, is the 
Comforter of the distressed. He meets the 
natural cry of misery, and goes out to wipe 
away the tears of sorrow, by the hand of 
His redeeming mercy. He came to bind up 
the broken-hearted, and to comfort those that 
mourn ; but it is in His own way. Many have 
come to Him, led, as it seemed, by the mere 
instinctive longing after happiness, and have 
tried faith in the Gospel, as a last and almost 
hopeless experiment, after the failure of every 
other attempt to obtain consolation. And, oh ! 
what an unlooked-for discovery have they 
made ! They who had found no resting-place 
5 



66 The Syni^athizmg Friend. 

in the world, and who had wandered through 
it in quest of some object, however insignifi- 
cant, that might divert them from their sor- 
rows, and for a moment at least remove the 
sense of that hopeless grief which lay dead 
upon the heart, find now an object which the 
widest desires of their soul could not grasp, 
and of such irresistible power as to turn the 
current of their feelings ; — I mean the salva- 
tion which is in Christ Jesus, with eternal 
glory. They who had been ready to aban- 
don life as having no charm, and to embrace 
death as having no greater terror than their 
present aflfliction, now see that even in the 
absence of that which once threw over their 
existence its deepest interest, they can find 
something worth living for, in the pursuit of 
an eternal joy. While in sorrow and in des- 
olation they went to Jesus for comfort, the 
Spirit, whose secret but unknown influence 
guided their steps, opened the eyes of their 
understanding to discern the path of life, and, 
by the aid of a hope full of immortality, to 



The Sympathizing Fi'icnd. 67 

rise above the ravages of death and the spo- 
liations of the grave. Thus, while like Mary 
Magdalene they were lingering round the sep- 
ulchre, the Saviour revealed Himself to them, 
and they dried up their tears in the presence 
of their Lord. May it be so with those who 
shall read these pages. May you in your afflic- 
tion turn to religion, that grand catholicon and 
panacea for the sorrows of life. You do nQt 
know, even yet, how much you will need it 
in the future stages, of your sad and solitary 
journey. The friends whom the freshness of 
3'our grief has gathered round you may forget 
3^our loss much sooner than you will ; and the 
force of their sympathy may have spent itself, 
long before the tide of your grief has ceased 
to flow. Few, very few, are the faithful 
friends whose tender interest is as long-lived 
and as deep as our tribulation. Sympathy 
wears out long before that which calls it into 
existence : and then, what can comfort you 

but religion? 

John Angell James. 



68 The Sympathizing Friend, 



JESUS, elder Brother, hear! 
To Thee I lift mine eye : 
Sorrows reach Thy listening ear, 

And move Thee, throned on high ; 
Touch Thy tender human heart, 

Where our names are all engraved, 
Sharers of the better part. 

Though once by sin enslaved. 

Jesus, elder Brother, hear ! 

To Thee my griefs are known : 
All my sadness Thou wilt cheer. 

Remembering Thine own ; 
Yet our sorrows we must bring, 

Suppliant mom*ners, to Thy feet, 
Craving help as from a king. 

Upon his mercy-seat. 

Jesus, elder Brother, hear 
A bruised sinner's prayer ! 

Wash my stains, dispel my fear, 
Lift off my load of care ; 



The Sympathizing Friend. 69 



Fill my soul with thoughtful love, 

Satan's work therein destroy ; 
Light my pathway from above, 

And be my heaven of joy ! 

James Mackay. 



THERE is a depth of agony and loneli- 
ness in the sorrow of bereavement, into 
the secrecy of which the bereaved onl}^ can 
enter. It touches the finest and most hidden 
springs of the soul. It lies fathoms deep, and 
seldom passes the lips. The crushed affec- 
tions — the annihilated hopes — the severed 
ties of friendship — the grave entombing life's 
charm, attraction, and sweetness, — quench- 
ing the sunbeam that illumined the dreary 
wilderness — are griefs not always apparent, 
or that may be known and told, but which 
yet plough the deepest furrows on the brow, 
and silver the hair with its earliest gray. But, 
oh, to know that Jesus can enter into its sor- 
row, is touched with the feeling of this grief, 



70 The Sympathizing Friend. 

and is prepared to accompany us to the grave 
and weep with us there, is a solace no lan- 
guage can describe ! Precious Jesus ! must 
Thou feel Thy own sorrows thus to enter into 
ours? Was ever love like Thine? 

^^Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister, 
and Lazarus." That love was the secret of 
His tears. He knew what a brother Lazarus 
had been ; how like weak and clinging ten- 
drils these sisters had entwined around him 
for their sunshine and support. And now 
that he was removed, they were torn from 
their stay, and lay prostrate and bleeding on 
the earth. And as He beheld their grief — 
Martha's impetuous and chiding, Mary's veiled 
and silent, yet both real, intense, and agoniz- 
ing— Jesus wept. Beloved reader, the Lord 
is acquainted with our domestic ties, and takes 
an interest in each one. No act of kindness, 
no breach of faith, no tie tenderly cherished 
or rudely sundered, no duty faithfully dis- 
charged or wilfully neglected, no relation hon- 
ored and sanctified, escapes His all-seeing, 



The Sympathizing Friend. 71 

approving, or condemning eye. And when 
death enters and sunders a domestic hnk, and 
fills the home with mourning and the heart 
with woe, Jesus comes and makes all grace 
abound, giving submission to the will, peace 
to the mind, and consolation to the heart. 
Oh, there lives not a being in the universe 
who can enter into our bereavements with 
the sympathy, the succor, and the soothing 
of Christ ! 

WiNSLOW. 



UNDER the shadow of thy wing abiding, 
Close to a sympathizing Saviour's side, 
In the sure promise of His love confiding. 

Why should I shrink, though earthly ills betide ? 

Oh ! if the soul grew strong through suffering 
only, 

If but through trial it may reach its goal, 
I will rejoice, although my w^ay be lonely. 

And all Thy waves and billows o'er me roll. 



72 The Syiii^athizing Friend. 

Yes — I will praise Thee ! though my tears are 
falling 
Upon the trembling harp-string as I sing ; 
Am I not safe — though grief my' soul is thralling — 
Under the shadow of my Father's wing? 

R. A. R. 



"T SEE the heavens opened, and the Son of 
J- Man standing at the right hand of God." 
What a testimony is this vision of Stephen to 
the blessed sympathy of our Lord in all cir- 
cumstances of trial and suffering ! We know 
how compassionate He was when living on 
earth, but sometimes the doubt will intrude. 
Does He feel the same interest, and ofier as 
constant help, now that He has exchanged 
earth for heaven? 

There the angels worship Him ; there the 
companies of the redeemed cast their crowns 
at His feet ; we know not what high adminis- 
trations may employ His powers. Receiving 
new honors, engaging, perhaps, in new works 



The Sympathizing Fy'iend. 73 

of mercy, does He still care for us? The 
question is answered as we see Him, in this 
hour of His disciple's trial, "standing on the 
right hand of God," like one who has risen 
up to welcome an expected guest. 

Who can tell how many of the " noble army 
of martyrs " have been strengthened by these 
words? More precious in their extremity this 
may have been than any other Scripture. In 
the dungeon, on the rack, ^it the stake amid 
consuminor flames, thev have remembered 

O 'J 

Him, w^aiting to receive their spirits, and so 
have endured triumphantly. To every suflTer- 
ing disciple — to those despised and persecut- 
ed, though not unto death ; to those struggling, 
burdened, fainting ; to those racked with pain, 
or bearing the sorrows of lingering disease ; 
to those bereaved and lonely, whose home is 
darkened, whose heart is desolate, in every 
form and degree of grief, there is unfailing 
comfort here. 

To all the dying who die in the Lord — as 
they lie so weak, friends around them so help- 



74 The Sympathizing Friend. 

less, the body, it may be, distorted like Ste- 
phen's beneath the falling stones — comes the 
sweet assurance that One is watching them in 
most tender pity, even anxious for the last 
hour to come, that He may transport them to 
glory. Thus the ascended Saviour once more 
appears to prove Himself the same friend, now 
and ever, that He was when on earth ; to re- 
move every doubt of His constant sympathy 
and love ; to demonstrate that even at the 
right hand of the Majesty on high. He has no 
ofRce or care which will make Him, in any 

hour, forgetful of our need. 

J. H. Means. 



A SOUND in yonder glade, 
But not of fount or breeze, 
A sound, but not of the whispering made ' 

By the palm and the oHve trees ; 
It is not the minstrel's lute, 

Nor the swell of the night-bird's song, 
Nor the city's hum, when all else is mute, 
By echo borne along. 



The Symfathizing Friend. 75 

'Tis a voice, — the Savi-our's own, — 

"Woman, why weepest thou?" 
She turns, and her grief is forever flown. 

And the shade that dimmed her brow: 
He is there, her risen Lord, 

No more to know decHne ; 
He is there, with peace in His every word, 

The w^ept One, still divine. 

" My Father's throne to share. 

As King, as God, I go ; 
But a brother's heart will be with me there, 

For my brethren left below." 
The weeper is laid in dust ; 

Her Lord is throned on high ; 
But ours may be still that weeper's trust. 

And ours that Lord's reply. 

Alourner, 'mid nature's bloom. 

Dimming its light with tears, 
And captive, to whom the lone, dark room 

Grows darker yet with fears. 
And spirit, that like a bird. 

Rests not on sea or shore, — 
The voice in the olive glade once heard, 

Hear ye, and weep no more. 

M. J. Jewsbury. 




(70) 



THE FRUIT OF SORROW. 



Mourners who weep ! — albeit, as some have done, 

Ye grope, tear-blinded, in a desert place, 

And touch but tombs, — look up 1 Those tears will run 

Soon, in long rivers, down the lifted face. 

And leave the vision clear for stars and sun. 

Mrs. E. B. Browning. 



(77) 




THE FRUIT OF SORROW, 



IT is familiar how bereavements, which are 
the storms of the soul, prepare the way 
for religious tranquillity. I suppose that in 
every parish church in the land, the majority 
of trusting disciples w^ere made so under the 
rough handling of some kind of pain. They 
had to march, weeping, blinded, through the 
dry valley of Baca, to find it at last "a well" 
of living water, and going from strength to 
strength, to appear in Zion before God. Res- 
ignation is rest; and, to know it, the heart 
has to be torn by terrible separations, — writh- 
ing at the new-made grave, heavy among the 
ruins of fortune, broken ovet* disappointed 
plans or unreturned affections. It is humili- 



8o The Fruit of Sorrow. 

ating, but real. Tempests must sweep our 
sky, before the air is still and the summer 
sunshine calls up the noiseless energies of 
life. Ask the ministers, the church records, 
the secret thanksgivings that rise around the 
communion-table. They will tell you, as One 
greater than they told you long before, that 
crosses bring calmness, — that afflictions yield 
afterwards the peaceable fruits of righteous- 
ness ; that the rough, sharp mountains, hard 
to climb, bring peace ; and that the Sabbath 
temple, the Lord's great house of Rest, into 
which the toilsome nations flow to praise, is 

built upon their top. 

F. D. Huntington. 



GOD sends the famine into the soul — the 
hunger, and thirst, and the disappointment 
— to bring back his erring child again: Now 
the world fastens upon that truth, and gets 
out of it a triumphant sarcasm against reli- 
gion. They tell us that just as the caterpillar 



The Fruit of Sori'ozv. 8i 

passes into the chrysalis, and the chrysalis 
into the butterfly, so profligacy passes into dis- 
gust, and disgust passes into religion. To use 
their own phraseology, when people become 
disappointed with the , world, it is the last 
resource, they say, to turn saint. So the men 
of the world speak, and they think they are 
profoundly philosophical and concise in the 
account they give. The world is welcome 
to its very small sneer. It is the glor}^ of our 
Master's gospel that it is the refuge of the 
broken-hearted. It is the strange mercy of 
our God that He does not reject the writhings 
of a jaded heart. Let the world curl its lip, 
if it will, when it sees through the causes of 
the prodigal's return. And if the sinner does 
come to God taught by this disappointment, 
what then? If affections crushed in early life 
have driven one man to God ; if wrecked and 
ruined hopes have made another man reli- 
gious ; if want of success in a profession has 
broken the spirit; if the human life, lived out 

too passionately, has left a surfeit and a crav- 
6 



82 The Fruit of Sorrow. 

ing behind which end in seriousness ; if one 
is brought by the sadness of widowed hfe, 
and another by the forced desolation of invol- 
untary single life ; if, when the mighty famine 
comes into the heart, and not a husk is left, 
not a pleasure untried, then, and not till then, 
the remorseful resolve is made, " I will arise 
and go to my Father," — well, brethren, what 
then? Why, this: that the history of peni- 
tence, produced as it so often is by mere disap- 
pointment, sheds only a brighter lustre round 
the love of Christ, who rejoices to receive such 
wanderers, worthless as they are, back into 
His bosom. Thank God, the world's sneer 
is true. It is the last resource to turn saint. 
Thanks to our God that when this gaudy 
world has ceased to charm, when the heart 
begins to feel its hollowness, and the world 
has lost its satisfying power, still all is not yet 
lost, if penitence and Christ remain, to still, to 
humble, and to soothe a heart which sin has 

fevered. 

F. W. Robertson. 



The Frtcit of So7^row. 83 



THE thorns are sharp, yet I can tread on them ; 
The cup is bitter, yet He makes it sweet ; 
My face is steadfast toward Jerusalem ; 
My heart remembers it. 

I lift the hanging hands, the feeble knees, — 

I, precious more than seven times molten gold, — 
Until the day when from His storehouses 
God shall bring new and old. 

Beauty for ashes, oil of joy for grief, 

Garment of praise for spirit of heaviness, 
Although to-day I fade as doth a leaf, 
I languish and grow less. 

Although to-day He prunes my twigs with pain, 

Yet doth His blood nourish and warm my root ; 
To-morrow I shall put forth buds again, 
And clothe myself with fruit. 

Although to-day I walk in tedious ways, — 

To-day His staff is turned into a rod, — 

Yet will I wait for Him the appointed days. 

And stay upon my God. 

Christina Rossetti. 



84 The Fruit of Sorrow. 



"'"I ^HEY were all baptized in the cloud and 
A in the sea ; " this is the register of all 
Christ's chosen ones, the pledge of their in- 
itiation into that covenant, " whose promises, 
whose rewards, whose very beatitudes, are 
sufferings." Why does St. Paul so rejoice, 
so delight himself in weakness, in persecution, 
in affliction, but because he knows that with- 
out these he can attain no close intimacy with 
his beloved Lord? And if this be a sore les- 
son, is it not one for which the heart may 
be in some degree prepared, even by its own 
natural experience? Do not trials and sorrows 
— also, it is true, deep joys — shared between 
two friends, partings, dangers, above all, the 
having stood together in the presence of death, 
deepen the channel of our affection in deep- 
ening that of our existence? Are not such 
moments, as it were, sacramental, bringing us 
nearer each other in bringing us nearer to 
God, from whom the poor unrealities of time, 
unworthy of us as they are of Him ^ too much 



The Frtcit of Sori'ow, 85 

divide us? It is often through some keen, 
even desolating shock, — the blasting of the 
breath of God's chiding, — that the deep foun- 
dations of our nature are first discovered to 
us. When the veil of the temple, even this 
poor worn garment of our humanity, is rent 
from the top to the bottom, we catch glimpses 
of the inner glor}^ : the rocks are riven, the 
graves open, they who have long slept in the 
dust come forth, and reveal to us awful and 
tender secrets, of which otherwise we should 
have known nothing. '' They who love," as 
says St. Chrysostom, ''if it be but man, not 
God," will know what I mean, when I speak 
of joys springing out of the very heart of an- 
guish, and holding to it b}' a common and 
inseparable life ; will understand how it comes 
that the pale flowers which thrust themselves 
out of the ruins of hope, of endeavor, of affec- 
tion, — yes, even out of the mournful wreck 
of intellect itself, — should breathe out a deep 
and intimate fragrance, such as the broad 
wealth of air and sunshine never yet gave; — 



86 The Fruit of Sorrow. 

'•'' For in things 
That move past utterance, tears ope all their springs, 
Nor are there in the powers that all life bears, 
More true interpreters of all than tears." 

It needs but little consideration to perceive 

that devotion, self-sacrifice, all the higher 

moods and energies even of natural feeling, 

are only possible to seasons of adversity. 

" Deep calleth unto deep." We need not look 

far into man's nature to see that its true wealth 

does not lie so near the surface but that the 

smooth grassy levels of prosperity hide riches 

such as only a shock can develope. 

Dora Greenwell. 



WITHIN this leaf, to every eye 
So Httle worth, doth hidden lie 
Most rare and subtile fragrancy : 

Wouldst thou its secret strength unbind? 
Crush it, and thou shalt perfume find. 
Sweet as Arabia's spicy wind. 



The Frtiit of Sorrow. 87 

In this dull stone, so poor, and bare 
Of shape or lustre, patient care 
Will find for thee a jewel rare. 

But first must skilful hands essay, 
With file and flint, to clear away 
The film which hides its fire from day. 

This leaf? this stone? It is thy heart: 
It must be crushed by pain and smart. 
It must be cleansed by sorrow's art. 

Ere it will yield a fragrance sweet. 
Ere it will shine a jewel meet. 
To lay before thy dear Lord's feet. 

Hymns of the Ages. 



'"INHERE are moments when the heart re- 
J- fuses all control, and gives itself, without 
reserve, to grief. It feels and even cherishes 
emotions which it cannot yield up to any power 
less than that of heaven or of time. Argu- 
ments may vainly, sometimes, forbid the tears 



88 The Fruit of Sorrow. 

that flow for the aflfecting events of remem- 
brance or anticipation. Arguments will not 
obliterate scenes whose every circumstance 
pierced the heart. iVrguments cannot recall 
the victims of death. Dear affections! — the 
sources of felicity, the charm of life, — what 
pangs, too, they can cause ! You have loved 
sensibility, you have cultivated it, and you are 
destined yet, I hope, to obtain many of its 
sweetest pleasures ; but you see how much it 
must sometimes cost you. Contemn, as it 
deserves, the pride of stoicism ; but still there 
are the most cogent reasons why sorrow should 
somewhere be restrained. It should acknowl- 
edge the limits imposed by judgment and the 
will of Heaven. Do not yield your mind to 
the gloomy extinction of utter despondency. 
It still retains the most dear and valuable inter- 
ests, which require to be saved from the sacri- 
fice. Before the present circumstances took 
place, the wish of friendship would have been, 
that you might be long happily exempted from 
them ; now it is that you may gain from them 



The Fruit of Soj'row, 89 

as high an improvement and a triumph as 
ever an excellent mind won from trial. From 
you an example may be expected of the man- 
ner in which a virtuous and thoughtful person 
has learnt to bear the melancholy events of 
life. Even at such a season it is not a duty 
to abandon the study of happiness. Do not 
altogether turn away from sweet Hope, with 
her promises and smiles. Do not refuse to 
believe that this dark cloud will pass away, 
and the heavens shine again ; that happier 
days will compensate these hours that move 
in sadness. Grief will have its share, — a 
painful share ; but grief will not have your 
all. There is good in existence still, — rich, 
various, endless, — the pursuit of which will 
elevate, and the attainment of which will crown 
you. 

The most pathetic energies of consolation 
can be imparted by religion alone, — the 
never-dying principle of all that is happy in 
the creation. The firm persuasion that all 
things that concern us are completely, every 



90 The Fruit of Sorrow. 

moment, in the hands of our Father above, 
infinitely wise and merciful; that He disposes 
all these events in the best possible manner ; 
and that we shall one day bless Him, amid the 
ardors of infinite gratitude, for even His most 
distressing visitations, — such a sublime persua- 
sion will make the heart and the character 
sublime. It will enable you to assemble all 
your interests together ; your wishes, your pros- 
pects, your sorrows, and the circumstances of 
the persons that are dear to you, and present 
them, in one devout ofiering, to the best Fa- 
ther, the greatest Friend; and it will assure 
you of being, in every scene of life, the ob- 
ject of His kind, perpetual care. 

Permit me to add that one of the most pow- 
erful means towards preserving a vigorous 
tone of mind in unhappy circumstances, is to 
explore, with a resolute eye, the serious les- 
sons which they teach. Events like those 
which you have beheld open the inmost tem- 
ple of solemn truth, and throw around the 
very blaze of revelation. In such a school, 



The Fruit of Soi'row, 91 

such a mind may make incalculable improve- 
ments. I consider a scene of death as being, 
to the interested parties who witness it, a kind 
of sacrament^ inconceivably solemn, at which 
they are summoned by the voice of Heaven, 
to pledge themselves in vows of irreversible 
decision. Here then, Caroline, as at the high 
altar of eternity, you have been called to 
pronounce, if I may express it so, the invio- 
lable oath; to keep forever in view the mo- 
mentous value of life, and to aim at its wor- 
thiest use, its sublimest end; to spurn, with a 
last disdain, those foolish trifles, those frivo- 
lous vanities, which so generally, within our 
sight, consume life, as the locusts did Egypt ; 
and to devote yourself, with the ardor of pas- 
sion, to attain the most divine improvements 
of the human soul ; and, in short, to hold your- 
self in preparation to make that interesting 
transition to another life, whenever you shall 
be claimed by the Lord of the world. 

John Foster. 



92 The Fruit of Sorrow. 



" T KNOW," is all the mourner saith, 
X ^' Knowledge by suffering entereth, 
And life is perfected by death ; — 

*' I am content to touch the brink 
Of pain's dark goblet, and I think 
My bitter drink a wholesome drink. 

''I am content to be sq w^eak : 

Put strength into the words I speak. 

For I am strong in what I seek. 

'' I am content to be so bare 

Before the archers ; everywhere 

My wounds being stroked b}^ heavenly air. 

"Glory to God— to God," he saith; 
" Knowledge by suffering entereth. 
And life is perfected by death." 



The Fritit of Soi'i'ow, 93 



THERE are two ways in W'hich we may 
defeat the purposes of God in grief — 
by forgetting it, or by over-indulging it. 

The world's way is to forget. It prescribes 
gayety as the remedy for woe ; banishes all 
objects w^hich recall the past ; makes it the 
etiquette of feeling, even amongst near rela- 
tions, to abstain from the mention of the names 
of the lost ; gets rid of the mourning-w^eeds 
as soon as possible, — the w^orst of all reme- 
dies for grief. Sorrow, the discipline of the 
Cross, is the school for all that is highest in 
us. Self-know^ledge, true power, all that dig- 
nifies humanit}", are precluded the moment 
you try to merely banish grief. It is a touch- 
ing truth that the Saviour refused the anodyne 
on the cross that would have deadened pain. 
He would not steep his senses in oblivion. 
He would not suffer one drop to trickle down 
the side of His Father's cup of anguish un- 
tasted. 

The other w^ay is to nurse sorrow : nay, 



94 The Fruit of Sorrow. 

even our best affections may tempt us to this. 
It seems treason to those we have loved to 
be happy now. We sit beneath the cypress; 
we school ourselves to gloom. Romance mag- 
nifies the fidelity of the broken heart : we re- 
fuse to be comforted. 

Now all this must be done by effort, gen- 
erally speaking. For God has so constituted 
both our hearts and the world, that it is hard 
to prolong grief beyond a time. Say what 
we will, the heart has in it a surprising, nay, 
a startling elasticity. It cannot sustain unal- 
terable melancholy ; and beside our very path- 
way plants grow, healing and full of balm. 
It is a sullen heart that can withstand the slow 
but sure influences of the morning sun, the 
summer sky, the trees and flowers, and the 
soothing power of human sympathy. 

We are meant to sorrow, " but not as those 
without hope." The rule seems to consist in 
being simply natural. The great thing which 
Christ did was to call men back to simplicity 
and nature ; not to perverted, but original 



The Frtiit of Sorrow, 95 

nature. He counted it no derogation of His 
manhood to be seen to weep. He thought it 
no shame to mingle with merry crowds. He 
opened His heart wude to all the genial and 
all the mournful impressions of this manifold 
life of ours. And this is what we have to do : 
be natural. Let God, that is, let the influ- 
ences of God, freely play unthwarted upon 
the soul. Let there be no unnatural repres- 
sion ; no control of feeling by mere effort. 
Let there be no artificial and prolonged grief, 
no '-minstrels making a noise." Let great 
Nature have her way. Or, rather, feel that 
you are in a Father's world, and live in it 
with Him, frankly, in a free, fearless, child- 
like, and natural spirit. Then grief will do 
its w^ork healthily. The heart wdll bleed, and 
stanch when it has bled enough. Do not stop 
the bleeding : but, also, do not open the wound 
afresh. 

F. W. Robertson. 



96 The Fruit of Sorrow. 



DO not cheat thy heart and tell her, 
" Grief will pass away ; 
Hope for fairer times in futurcy 

And forget to-day." 
Tell her, if you will, that sorrow 

Need not come in vain ; 
Tell her that the lesson taught her 
Far outweighs the pain. 

Cheat her not w^ith the old comfort, 

'' Soon she will forget : " 
Bitter truth, alas ! but matter 

Rather for regret. 
Bid -her not " Seek other pleasures, 

Turn to other things : " — 
Rather nurse her caged sorrow, 

Till the captive sings. 

Rather bid her go forth bravely, 

And the stranger greet; 
Not as foe, with spear and buckler, 

But as dear friends meet: 



The Fruit of Sorrow. 97 

Bid her with a strong clasp hold her, 

By her dusky wings, 

Listening for the murmured blessing 

Sorrow always brings. 

A. A. Procter. 



I LOVE to indulge hope ; for affliction is a 
seed-time. Since God has called you 
aside, has spoken so emphatically, and you 
have had leisure for serious meditation, do not 
the provisions of the gospel appear new, suffi- 
cient, and exactly suited to your case? Do* 
you not mark that gold which the thief cannot 
steal? that foundation which no tempest can 
shake? that life over which death hath no 
powder? and that peace which the world can 
neither give nor take away? Does not the 
religion of Jesus, so forgotten and degraded 
among men, stand forward now as the "one 
thing needful"? Does not His friendship ap- 
pear now to be " that better part " which " shall 
not be taken aw^ay," and which alone can 

7 



98 The Fruit of Sorrow. 

help in extremities? In the wreck of human 
affairs, indeed, it is, that God often makes 
His truth appear, and causes His gospel, like 
a plank thrown out to the perishing mariner, 
to be properly known and prized. In the 
words of Dr. Johnson, "These are the great 
occasions which force the mind to take refuge 
in religion ; when we have no help in our- 
selves, what can remain but that we look up 
to a higher and a greater Power? and to what 
hope may we not raise our eyes and hearts, 
when we consider that the greatest Power is 
the best? 

" Surely there is no (truly wise) man, who, 
thus afflicted, does not seek succor in the gos- 
pel which has brought life and immortality to 
light. The precepts of Epicurus, who teaches 
us to endure what the laws of the universe 
make necessary, may silence but not content 
us. The dictates of Zeno, who commands us 
to look with indifference on external things, 
may dispose us to conceal our sorrow, but 
cannot assuage it. Real alleviation of the loss 



The Fj'tdt of Sori'ozv. 99 

of friends, and rational tranquillity in the pros- 
pect of our own dissolution, can be received 
only from the promises of Him in whose 
hands are life and death ; and from the assur- 
ances of another and better state, in which 
all tears will be wiped from the ej^es, and the 
whole soul shall be filled with joy. Philoso- 
ph}^ may infuse stubbornness, but religion only 
can give patience." 

In health and ease, ingenious speculations 
may amuse and satisfy us ; but when He 
"takes away the desire of our eyes with a 
stroke," our sorrows are too deep to be allevi- 
ated by the mere orator or philosopher. We 
even turn in disgust from him who would thus 
trifle with our case. We need a support which 
the world cannot afford. "I faint," says the 
wounded soul : " I want an Almighty arm to 
lean on now ; yea, a very tender and compas- 
sionate one too; — one like that of the Son of 
Man. I need ' a merciful and faithful High 
Priest,' who, having been tempted, ' knows 
how to succor the tempted ; ' that Man of Sor- 



lOo The Fruit of Sorrow, 

rows, that Brother born for adversity, who, 
being acquainted with grief, can enter into my 
case, and commune with me in all the pecu- 
liarities of my distress." 

Cecil. 



WHEN some beloved voice, that was to you 
Both sound and sweetness, failedi suddenly, 
And silence, against which you dare not cry, 
Aches round you like a strong disease and new — 
What hope? what help? what music will undo 
That silence to your sense? Not friendship's sigh. 
Not reason's subtle count ! Not melody 
Of viols, nor of pipes that Faunus blew — 
Not songs of poets, nor of nightingales. 
Whose hearts leap upward- through the cypress 

trees 
To the clear moon ; nor yet the spheric laws 
Self-chanted ; nor the angels' sweet '' All hail ! " 
Met in the smile of God. Nay, none of these : 
Speak Thou, availing Christ ! — and fill this pause. 

Mrs. E. B. Browning. 



The F7'uit of Sorrow. loi 



DEEP grief is better let alone ; 
Voices to it are swords ; 
A silent look will soothe it more 
Than tenderness of words. 

But am I comfortless? Oh, no! 

Jesus this pathway trod ; 
And deeper in my soul than grief 

Art Thou, my dearest God ! 

Faber. 



WHEN, at the Last Supper, Christ sat 
down with His disciples, one might have 
expected that in the view of the approaching 
hours of sorrow He would be entirely occu- 
pied with His own thoughts. But how differ- 
ent was the case ! In that moment all His 
thought and care were for His own, — how 
He should comfort them, how He should 
strengthen them, — so that even John, who 
knew his Master so well, is struck with it, 
and writes, with wonder, " Having loved His 



I02 The Fruit of Sorrow, 

own which were in the world, He loved them 
unto the end,'''' This self-forgetful love He 
retained in the darkness of death, ay, even 
until He bowed His head and gave up the 
ghost. He knew the rare art well of forget- 
ting His own suftering in the thought of the 
distress of others. Which of its has learned 
that art? We calculate and distinguish be- 
tween what is ours and w^hat our neighbor's. 
We do so even when God has given us a light 
and happy heart, while to others he has allot- 
ted sorrow, when w^e could w^ell afford to take 
upon ourselves part of our neighbor's burden. 
But when our own heart is oppressed with 
sorrow, how few of us would then preserve a 
heart so large and wide thcit he could forget 
himself, and find a place in his sympathy for 
his neighbor's affliction. 

Sorrow-laden Christians, are you sufficient- 
ly mindful of the fact that affliction has a ten- 
dency to make people egotistical and self- 
absorbed? Ye who have a cross of care to 
bear, do you not perceive that to be exclu- 



The Fridt of Sorrow. 103 

sively engrossed with one's own peculiar grief 
narrows the heart, so that it becomes incapa- 
ble of taking up into its sympathy the woes 
of others? Oh, be strong in the love of Jesus, 
and learn to forget 3^our own distress in that 
of others I At all events, the affliction of your 
relations, of those who are your own flesh and 
blood, ought not surely to be foreign to your 
deepest sympathies ; you ought to think of it 
as your own. Children, how often have your 
father and mother forgotten their own joy and 
sorrow in their sympathy with your sorrow ; 
and have 3^ou not strength enough to forget 
yourselves in the sorrow of your parents? Yea, 
all of you, learn to bury and forget your own 
griefs and sufferings in the griefs and suffer- 
ings of others. You w^ill do so to your own 
advantage. For he who seeks to bind up the 
wounds of others, lays, in the very act, a balm 
upon his own ; and soft and gentle flow the 
tears of him who himself dries the tears from 
a brother's e3^e ! Well do those widows know 
this, and those childless parents, who, because 



I04 The Fruit of Sorrow. 

they must stand alone in the world, having 
no one to dry their own eyes and soothe their 
own. sorrow, have made it the work of their 
life to minister the balm of consolation to their 
fellow-men, and wipe away their tears. Chris- 
tians, there is no other way of ridding your- 
selves of the burden of your sorrow than by 
burying it, and forgetting it in the griefs of 
others ! O, Thou noble, blessed Model of 
self-forgetting love ! Thou w^ho didst come 
into the world, not to be ministered unto, but 
to minister! Thee will we gaze on. Thee will 
we love, until we learn to love our relations 
with a love, which, in its solicitude for them, 

forgets its own affliction ! 

Tholuck. 



"TS thy burden hard and heavy? Do thy steps 

X drag wearily? 

Help to bear thy brother's burden ; God will bear 
both it and thee. 



The Fruit of Sorrow. 105 

Faint and weary on the mountains, wouldst thou 

sleep amidst the snow? 
Chafe that frozen form beside thee, and together 

both shall glow. 
Art thou stricken in life's battle? many wounded 

round thee moan ; 
Lavish on their w^ounds thy balsams, and that balm 

shall heal thine own. 

Is the heart a well left empty? None but God 

its void can fill ; 
Nothing but a ceaseless fountain can its ceaseless 

longing still. 
Is the heart a living power? Self-entwined, its 

strength sinks low ; 
It can only live in loving, and by serving love 

will grow." 



OLORD ! that I could waste my life for others, 
With no ends of my own ; 
That I could pour myself into my brothers, 
* And live for them alone ! 



io6 The F7'uit of Sorrow. 

Such was the life Thou livedst, — self-abjuring, 

Thine own pains never easing ; 
Our burdens bearing, our just doom enduring, — 

A life without self-pleasing. 

Faber. 



HOW many Christians have had reason to 
acknowledge the blessed effect of afflic- 
tion, in renewing their communion with God, 
and reviving their decayed devotion ! Are 
there not many w^ho can testify, from their 
own experience, that while they were prosper- 
ous, the spirit of devotion became impercepti- 
bly more languid in their bosoms? that instead 
of frequently enjoying prayer as a delightful 
privilege, they were gradually losing their 
relish for it, and that when they did observe 
it, it was observed in a cold and formal man- 
ner? They were not sensible of the length to 
which they had proceeded in spiritual declen- 
sion, till, by some severe stroke of affliction, 
they were thrown on the resources of a piety 



The Frint of Sorrow. 107 

too decayed to afford them either support or 
consolation, and were thus, for the first time, 
apprised of a danger till then unperceived. 

One of the greatest benefits of severe afflic- 
tion, in the case of God's people, is, that it 
awakens them to greater ardor and diligence 
in prayer ; and such is the blessedness of com- 
munion with God, and such is the elevating 
and sanctifying effect of earnest prayer, that 
were affliction productive of no other benefit, 
this alone might well compensate for all the 
loss which is sustained, and all the pain which 
is inflicted, even by the severest dispensations 

of providence. 

J. Buchanan. 



THERE are some spirits which must go 
through a discipline analogous to that 
sustained by Elijah. The storm-struggle must 
precede the still small voice. There are minds 
which must be convulsed with doubt before they 
can repose in faith. There are hearts which 



io8 The Fruit of Sorrow.. 

must be broken with disappointment before 
they can rise into hope. There are dispositions 
which, hke Job, must have all things taken from 
them, before they can find all things again in 
God. Blessed is the man who, when the tem- 
pest has spent its fury, recognizes his Father's 
voice in its undertone, and bares his head and 
bows his knee, as Elijah did. To such spirits, 
generally those of a stern, rugged cast, it seems 
as if God had said, "In the still sunshine, and 
ordinary ways of life, you cannot meet Me ; 
but like Job, in the desolation of the tempest, 
you shall see My Form and hear My Voice, 
and know that your Redeemer liveth." 

F. W. Robertson. 



SPEAK low to me, my Saviour, low and sweet, 
From out the hallelujahs, sweet and low. 
Lest I should fear and fall, and miss Thee so, 
Who art not missed by any that entreat. * 
Speak to me as to Mary at Thy feet; 
And if no precious gums my hands bestow, 
Let my tears drop like amber, while I go 



The Fruit of Sorrow. 109 

In reach of Thy divinest voice, complete 
In humanest affection ; thus, in sooth^ 
To lose the sense of losing ! As a child, 
Whose song-bird seeks the wood forevermore. 
Is sung to, in its stead, by mother's mouth. 
Till, sinking on her breast love-reconciled, 
•He sleeps the faster that he wept before. 

Mrs. E. B. Browning. 



THE counsel of Lord Bacon is good: 
"Learn of David to leave Shimei and 
call upon God : He hath some great work to 
do, and He prepareth you for it: He. would 
neither have you faint, nor bear this cross w^ith 
a stoical resolution." Bearing it meekly, and 
seeing the Divine hand in it, the profit to our 
souls may^ be true and lasting ; but without 
seeing the Divine hand in it, we shall have 
neither profit nor peace. We shall be either 
crushed or hardened by it, perhaps imbittered 
and exasperated, if we do not feel and ac- 
knowledge that " aflOiiction cometh not forth of 



no The Fricit of Sorrow. 

the dust," but is sent by God. Then alone 
shall we be disposed to " seek unto God " in 
our troubles, and able to understand the words, 
" Behold, happy is the man whom God cor- 
recteth ; therefore, despise not thou the chas- 
tening of the Almighty : for He maketh sore, 
and bindeth up ; He woundeth, and His hands 
make whole." 

In order to profit by affliction, we must make 
it our study to turn it into a means of spiritual 
good. While we are passive as to the afflic- 
tions themselves, we must not be passive as to 
the ends which they are designed to accom- 
plish. . The corn is passive in receiving good 
from alternate sunshine and shower. The oak 
is passive in its growth amid the storms which 
threaten to rend it. But w^here mind and heart 
are concerned, we must not be passive. We 
must concern ourselves, that both the sunshine 
and the shower, the calm and the storm, may 
do us good. By our indiflference and inatten- 
tion, a season which is fraught with blessing 
may pass over us without leaving one lasting 



The Fruit of Sorrow. iir 

salutary impression on our spirits ; whereas, 
by devout thought and prayer, it might yield 
us a wealth of spiritual good that would make 
it forever memorable. 

J. Kennedy. 



IN the still ah* the music Hes unheard ; 
In the rough marble beauty hides unseen ; 
To wake the music and tlie beauty needs 
The master's touch, the sculptor's chisel keen. 



Great Master, touch us with Thy skilful hand ; 
Let not the music that is in us die : 
Great Sculptor, hew and polish us, nor let. 
Hidden and lost, Thy form within us lie. 



Spare not the stroke ; do with us as Thou wilt ; 
Let there be nought unfinished, broken, marred ; 
Complete Thy purpose, that we may become, 
Thy perfect image, O our God and Lord. 

BONAR. 



112 The Fruit of Sorrow. 



HE who has no dear friend in the better 
world, who has not been called to sur- 
render to heaven one whom he has cherished 
here, lacks as yet an experience that would 
link him to the spiritual and the eternal with 
the most fervent sympathies of his being. All 
heavenly he may be in his temper and in his 
life ; his faith may be strong, his hope bright, 
his union with Christ complete, but he wants 
that tender and endearing sympathy w^ith heav- 
en that comes from having there a parent, a 
child, a sister, a wife, and that gives to the 
unseen world a home-like feeling and a pres- 
ent reality. He who has caught the last affec- 
tionate breathings of the departing saint, who, 
even as from the other side of the River of 
Death, has received the farewell greeting of 
faith, and love, and joy, has thenceforth a 
new experience of things spiritual and heav- 
enly ; has a vested interest in heaven, has a 
more assured hold upon its realities, and is a 
nearer partaker of its life. 



The Frtiit of Sorrow. 113 

i 

The gain of such an experience, the value 
of such a palpable and personal interest in 
that world, may well mitigate, if it do not 
compensate, his loss. New hnks bind him to 
that great spiritual world of which he is a 
member, and of which he shall soon become 
more cognizant, when flesh and sense and all 
the external media of thought shall give place 
to the direct intuition of God and of the future 
state. As each relationship of life — son, 
brother, husband, father — opens a new expe- 
rience of sympathy and affection, so does this 
personal affinity with some already in the 
world of spirits — the marriage of souls that 
survives the dissolution of earthly ties — bring 
with it a life-like experience of the unseen, 
the spiritual, the eternal, that binds the soul 
more closel}^ to its higher destiny, and imparts 
to it in hopes and aspirations an exceeding 
gain. Why art thou burdened, O my soul, 
with the pain of earthly loss ! Is not thy loss 
their gain whom thou didst love? and if their 
gain, is it not thy gain also, who art forever 
8 



114 -^'^^ Fruit of Sorrow. 

linked to them as a partner of their blessed- 
ness? 

J. P. Thompson. 



ONE to another hear them speak, 
The patient virgins wise : 
'^ Surely He is not far to seek," — 
'' All night we watch and rise." 
'' The days are evil, looking back, 

The coming days are dim ; 
Yet count we not His promise slack, 
But watch and wait for Him." 

One w^ith another, soul with soul. 

They kindle fire from fire : 
"Friends wfitch us who have touched the goal," 

" They urge us, come up higher ; " 
" With them shall rest our way-sore feet. 

With them is built our home 
With Christ." " They sweet, but He most sweet, 

Sweeter than honey-comb." 

There no more parting, no more pain, 
The distant ones brought near, 



The Fruit of Sorrow. 



115 



The lost so long are found again, 

Long lost, but longer dear. 
Eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard. 

Nor heart conceived that rest ; 
With them our good things long deferred. 

With Jesus Christ our Best. 

Christina Rossetti. 




CHILDREN IN HEAVEN. 



Oh, blest the soul, whose lips of faith can say. 

In the storm lulls of grief, — " Thj' -will be done ! "' 
Oh, blest the soul that trusts that Holy One 

Who in His bosom bears His lambs away! 

H. M. Kimball. 



(117) 




CHILDREN IN HEAVEN, 



THE strength of parental love is in propor- 
tion to its duties and trials. The moth- 
er's love grows with the burden near her heart, 
and, forgetting all her past pains, she makes 
no account of future cares, for joy that her. 
child is born into the world ; the father, as he 
receives his offspring within his arms, is con- 
scious of a new tie to life, of a fresh tender- 
ness gushing from his soul, and of an intense 
motive for honorable exertion. The babe's 
helpless dependence, anxiety for its slender 
health, hope for its riper years, as the harvest 
of their present watchful zeal, increase their 
fondness, and bind them more closely round 

their precious charge. 

(n9) 



I20 Children in Heaven, 

Very bitter, then, must be a parent's anguish, 
if the object of all this tenderness, and nursing, 
and hope be torn away ; its cradle-bed made 
vacant; its voice hushed, no more to gladden 
the desolate house ; the many day-dreams, 
brightly picturing for it a life, long, honored, 
and happy, dissipated by sad certainty ; noth- 
ing to tell of its brief being here but a little 
mound in the burial-place, and that inextin- 
guishable yearning known only in a heart 
which has beat beneath the sweet pressure of 
a child gone to the tomb. It is a sorrow 
which may be alleviated, and, throug'h the 
grace of Jesus, sanctified, but never utterly 
stilled while the mourner lives. Other chil- 
dren may be given, — the lap and the cradle 
again be filled, — but there is a chamber in 
the soul sacred to the unfading image of *the 
early lost ; and dear above every other spot of 
earth will be the little grave where its changed 

loveliness was hidden to " moulder out of 

« 

sight." 

But dry your tears, bereaved parents, or 



Children in Hcave^i, 121 

turn them into floods of joy. The voice that 
called them away was His who said, "They 
belong to my kingdom." The hand that took 
them from you was His who once laid His 
benediction on the infant's head. He has set 
them in the midst of His admiring disciples 
above. They are now the darling little ones 
of their Heavenly Father's house. The angels 
who watched over their cradle-beds are now 
rejoicing over their immortal beauty, as lambs 
safely folded, where the spoiler can never 
come. Heed them not, who would bid you 
doubt; point them to the recorded censure of 
the Master, displeased at so unmerciful an 
unbelief, — " Of such is the kingdom of heav- 
en." Out of the mouth of your babe, Christ's 
praise is perfected in the temple on high. 

G. W. Bethune. 



122 Children in Heaven. 



FRIENDS of faces unknown, and a land 
Unvisited over the sea, 
Who tell me how lonely you stand 
With a single gold curl in the hand, 
Held up to be looked at by me, — 

While you ask me to ponder, and say 

What a father and mother can do 
With the bright fellow-locks put away 
Out of reach, beyorid kiss, in the clay, 
Where the violets press nearer than you.- 

Shall I speak like a poet, or run 
Into weak woman's tears for relief? 

Oh, children — I never lost one ; 

Yet my arm 's round my own little son, 
And Love knows the secret of grief. 

And I feel what it must be and is. 
When God draws a new angel so 
Through the house of a man up to His, 
With a murmur of music you miss. 
And a rapture of light you forego. 



Childrcfi in Heaven. 123 

How you think, staring on at the door 
Where the face of your angel flashed in, 

That its brightness, familiar before, 

Burns off from you ever the more 
For the dark of your sorrow and sin. 

" God lent him and takes him,'' you sigh ; — 

Nay, there let me break with your pain : 
God 's generous in giving, say I, 
And the thing which He gives, I deny 
That He ever can take^back again. 

He gives what He gives : I apf)eal 

To all who bear babes ; in the hour 
When the veil of the body we feel 
Rent round us, — while torments reveal 
The motherhood's advent in power, 

And the babe cries, — has each of us known 

By apocalypse, — God being there 
Full in nature, — the child is our own, 
Life of life, love of love, moan of moan, 
Through all changes, all times, everywhere. 



124 Children in Heaven. 

He's ours, and forever. Believe, 

O father ! — O mother, look back 
To the first love's assurance. To give. 
Means, w^ith God, not to tempt or deceive, 
With a cup thrust in Benjamin's sacl^. 

He gives what He gives. Be content ! 

He resumes nothing given, — be sure ! 
God lend? Where the usurers lent 
In His temple, indignant He went, 

And scourged away all those impure 

He lends not, but gives to the end, 

As He loves to the end. If it seem 
That He draws back a gift, comprehend 
'Tis to add to it rather, — amend, 
And finish it up to your dream, — 

Or keep, as a mother may, toys 

Too costly, though given by herself, 
Till the room shall be stiller from noise, 
And the children more fit for such joys. 
Kept over their heads on the shelf. 



Childreri in Heaven. 125 

So look up, friends ! you who indeed 

Have possessed in your house a sweet piece 
Of the heaven which men strive for, must need 
Be more earnest than others are, — speed 
Where they loiter, persist where they cease. 

You know how one angel smiles there, — 

Then, courage. 'Tis easy for you 
To be drawn by a single gold hair 
Of that curl, from earth's storm and despair 
To the safe place above us. Adieu. 

Mrs. E. B. Browning. 



" \ NNIE," I said, gently, " do you know 
-^ ^ where your friend is gone ? " 

The simple question checked her sobs, and 
she looked timidly in my face, but made no 
reply. 

" Poor Annie ! " I continued ; " and did he 
indeed leave you, without telling you whither 
he was gone?" 

" Home, sir, home," she replied ; and the 



126 Children tn Heaven. 

accent, no less than the words, recalled to my 
mind the child-like old man : " he often told 
me that he was going home." 

"True," I replied, "and he is gone home 

« 

now. Do you really wish to see him again? 
She was silent; but the look of affection that 
beamed on every feature was a sufficient an- 
swer ; so I continued : " And if you do see 
him again, Annie, where will it be?" 

Her voice faltered, as she repeated the 
words, " At home ; " and she again burst into 
tears. 

"Yes, Annie," I said, after a short pause, 
"you cannot see him here, because he is gone 
away. He is naw happy in the enjoyment of 
his home, and you must wait till you can go to 
him there. But perhaps your home is differ- 
ent from his. Is it so, Annie?" 

"Oh, no!" she answered, with unexpected 
earnestness, " we are all children of the same 
Father, and all travel to the same home, — 
that is," she added, looking down, and color- 
ing deeply, " if we are careful to keep in the 
path that leads to it." 



Children in Heaven. 127 

"And what path is that, Annie?" 

" The path of truthful obedience, and quiet 

faith, and holy love," was her immediate 

reply. 

• ••••• 

Little Annie did not sorrow as those with- 
out hope ; and though, perhaps, the cord of 
affection, that united her so closely to the old 
man, may have hastened her progress to the 
home to which he was gone, I do not think 
that her bereavement was the cause of her 
death. I had left her, with the impression that 
she was not long for this world. I cannot 
exactly describe from whence this feeling 
arose. It was not merely because her cheek 
was w^an, and her complexion delicate, and 
her little heart seemed to beat with too eager 
emotion for the frail prison in which it was 
confined ; but there was something in her 
voice, look, and manner, which kept remind- 
ing me of the world of spirits ; as though, in 
all her youth and innocence, she were walk- 
ing on its very borders, and her gentle form 



128 Children t7i Heaven, 

might at any moment fade into the mist, and 
vanish from my view. 

The more I reflected on this, the more sure 
I became that Httle Annie had Hved her time; 
and that no sudden shock had broken prema- 
turely the thread of Hfe. I thought that this 
assurance might afford some comfort to her 
parents in their heavy affliction ; for Annie 
was an only daughter. But when I called 
upon them, the mother alone was at home; 
and I soon found that she needed no con- 
solation which I could aflford her. She had 
her own secret store of treasure in every word 
that had fallen from her darling child. I 
shall never forget the look with which she 
said to me, " Ah, sir, I understood very litde 
of her words while she w^as alive ; but the 
moment she was gone, it seemed as though 
a light was shining upon them from another 
world, and I can read them plainly now." 
And then, after a pause, she added, " Do 3'Ou 
remember, sir, on the very day you were with 
us, how she said, 'I will go home, directly. 



Children in Heaven. 129 

myself, and you shall follow me'?" I remem- 
bered it well ; and she saw from my counte- 
nance that I guessed her meaning. "Yes," 
she continued, as, in spite of every effort to 
suppress it, the big tear rolled down her cheek, 
"it was in order that her father and myself 
might learn to follow her, that little Annie 
was taken home. He too, sir, has become, 
since then, an altered man." 

A silent pressure of the hand was my only 
repl}' , for I felt that the afflicted mother had 
learnt more truly than I could teach her, the 
lesson which was to be gathered from the 
death of her child. 

The Old Mans Hotne, by Rev. Wm. Adams. 



■♦Ch 



WHEN on my ear your loss was knelled, 
And tender sympathy upburst, 
A little rill from memory swelled, 

Which once had soothed my bitter thirst. 

9 



130 Children in Heaven. 

And I was fain to bear to you 
Some portion of their mild relief, 

That it might be as healing dew, 
To steal some fever from your grief. 

After our child's untroubled breath 

Up to the Father took its way. 
And on our home the shade of death. 

Like a long twilight, haunting lay ; 

And friends came round with us to weep 

Her little spirit's swift remove, 
This story of the Alpine sheep 

Was told to us by one we love: 

" They, in the valley's sheltering care. 
Soon crop the meadow's tender prime. 
And when the sod grows brown and bare, 
The shepherd strives to make them climb 

*• To airy shelves of pasture green, 

That hang along the mountain's side, 
Where grass and flowers together lean. 

And down through mists the sunbeams slide, 



Children m Heaven. 131 

" But nought can tempt the timid things 
The steep and rugged path to try, 
Though sweet the shepherd calls and sings, 
And searcd below the pastures lie ; 

" Till in his arms the lambs he takes, 
Along the dizzy verge to go, 
Then, heedless of the rifts and breaks, 
They follow on, o*er rock and snow. 

''And in those pastures lifted fair, 

More dewy soft than lowland mead. 
The shepherd drops his tender care. 
And sheep and lambs together feed." 

This parable, by Nature breathed. 
Blew on me as the south wind free. 

O'er frozen brooks that float, unsheathed 
From icy thraldom, to the sea. 

A blissful vision through the night 
Would all my happy senses sway. 

Of the Good Shepherd on the height, 
Or climbing up the starry way, 



132 Children in Heaven, 

Holding our little lamb, asleep ; 

And like the burden of the sea 
Sounded that voice along the deep, 

Saying, "Arise, and follow me!" 

Maria Lowell. 



THERE was once a mother, kneeling by 
the bedside of the little one whom she 
hourly expected to lose. With what eyes of 
passionate love had she watched every change 
in that beautiful face ! How had her eyes 
pierced the heart of the physician, at his last 
visit, when they glared, rather than asked the 
question, whether there yet was hope ! How 
had she wearied Heaven with vows, that if 
it would but grant — "Ah," you say, "you 
can imagine all that without an}^ difficulty at 
all." Imagine this, too. 

Overwearied with watching, she fell into a 
doze beside the couch of her infant, and she 
dreamed in a few moments, as we are wont 
to do, the seeming history of long years. She 



Children in Heaven, 133 

thought she heard a voice from Heaven say 
to her, as to Hezekiah, " I have seen thy 
tears, I have heard thy prayers ; he shall 
live ; and yourself shall have the roll of his 
history presented to you." "Ah," you say, 
"you can imagine all that, too." 

Straightway she thought she saw her sweet 
child in the bloom of health, innocent and 
playful as her fond heart could wish. Yet a 
little while, and she saw. him in the flush of 
opening youth, beautiful as ever, but beauti- 
ful as a young panther, from whose eyes wild 
flashes and fitful passion ever and anon 
gleamed ; and she thought how beautiful he 
looked even in these moods, for she was a 
mother. But she also thought how many 
tears and sorrows may be needful to temper 
or quench these fires ! And she seemed to 
follow him through a rapid succession of 
scenes — now of troubled sunshine, now of 
deep gathering gloom. His sorrows were all 
of a common lot, but involved a sense of 
agony far greater than that which she would 



134 Children in Heaven. 

have felt from his early loss ; yes, greater 
even to her — and how much greater to him ! 
She saw him, more than once, wrestling with 
pangs more agonizing than those which now 
threatened his infancy ; she saw him involved 
in error, ^and with difficulty extricating him- 
self; betrayed into youthful sins, and repent- 
ing with scalding tears ; she saw him half 
ruined by transient prosperity, and scourged 
into tardy wisdom only b}^ long adversity ; 
she saw him worn and haggard with care, — 
his spirit crushed, and his early beauty all 
wan and blasted; worse still, she saw him 
thriee stricken with that very shaft which she 
had so dreaded to feel but once, and mourned 
to think that her praj^ers had prevailed to 
prevent her own sorrows only to multiply his ; 
worst of all, she saw him, as she thought, in 
a darkened chamber, kneeling beside a coffin 
in which youth and beauty slept their last 
sleep : and, as it seemed, her own image stood 
beside him, and uttered unheeded love to a 
sorrow that " refused to be comforted ; " and 



f 



Children in Heaven. 135 

as she gazed on that face of stony despair, 
she seemed to hear a voice, which said, "If 
thou wilt have thy floweret of earth unfold 
on earth, thou must not wonder at bleak win- 
ters and inclement skies, /would have trans- 
planted it to a more genial clime ; but thou 
wouldst not." And, with a cry of terror, she 
awoke. 

She turned to the sleeping figure before 
her, and sobbing, hoped it was sleeping its 
last sleep. She listened for his breathing, — 
she heard none ; she lifted the taper to his 
lips, — the flame wavered not; he had indeed 
passed away while she dreamed that he lived ; 
and she rose from her knees, and was eofn- 
forted. 

"Ah," you will say, "these sorrows could 
never have been the lot of my sweet child." 
It is hard to set one's logic against a moth- 
er's love ; I can only remind you, my dear 
cousin, that it has been the lot of thousands, 
whose mothers, as their little ones crowed 
and laughed in their arms, in childish happi- 



136 Children in Heaven. 

ness, would have sworn to the same impos- 
sibihty. But for you^ — you know what they 
could only believe, — that it is an impossibil- 
ity. Nay, I might hint at yet profounder con- 
solation, if, indeed, there ever existed a moth- 
er who could fancy that, in the case of her 
own child, it could ever be needed. Yet 
facts sufficiently show us, that what the 
dreaming mother saw — errors retrieved, sins 
committed but repented of, and sorrows that 
taught wisdom — are not always seen, and 
that children may, in spite of all, persist in 
exploring the path of evil " deeper and deeper 
still ! " With the shadow of uncertainty wheth- 
er it may not be so with any child, is there no 
consolation in thinking that even that shadow 
has passed away? For aught we know, many 
and many a mother may hereafter hear her 
lost darling say, " Sweet mother, I was taken 
from you a little while, only that I might abide 

with you forever ! " 

Henry Rogers. 



w 



Children in Heaven. 137 



ITHIN her downy cradle there lay a little 
child, 
And a group of hovering angels, unseen, upon 

her smiled ; 
A strife arose among them, a loving, holy strife, 
Which should shed the richest blessing over the 

new-born life. 

One breathed upon her features, and the babe in 

beauty grew, 
With a cheek like morning blushes, and an eye 

of azure hue. 
Till everv one who saw her was thankful for the 

sight 
Of a face so sweet and radiant with ever-fresh 

delight. 

Another gave her 'accents, and a voice as musical 
As a spring-bird's joyous carol, or a rippling 

streamlet's fall, 
.Till all who heard her laughing, or her words of 

childish grace, 
Loved as much to listen to her, as to look upon 
her face. 



138 Children in Heaven. 

Another brought from Heaven a clear and gentle 

mind, 
And within the lovely casket the precious gem 

enshrined, 
Till all w^ho knewT her w^ondered that God should 

be so good 
As to bless with such a spirit a desert world and 

rude ! 

Thus did she grow in beauty, in melody, and 

truth. 
The budding of her childhood just opening into 

youth ; 
And* to. our hearts yet dearer every moment than 

before 
She became, though we thought fondly, heart could 

not love her more. 

Then out spake another ange>, nobler, brighter 

than the rest, 
As with strong arm, but tender, he caught her to 

his breast : 
*' Ye have made her all too lovely for a child of 

mortal race, 
But no shade of human sorrow shall darken o'er 

her face. 



Children m Heaven. 139 



" Ye have tuned to gladness only the accents of 

her tongue, 
And no wail of human anguish shall from her 

lips be wrung ; 
Nor shall the soul that shineth so purely from 

within 
Her form of earth-born frailty ever know the taint 

of sin. 

" Lulled in my faithful bosom, I will bear her far 

away, 
Where there is no sin, nor anguish, nor sorrow, 

nor decay ; 
And mine a boon more glorious than all your 

gifts shall be, 
Lo ! I crown her happy spirit w^ith immortality ! " 
Then on his heart our darling yielded up her 

gentle breath. 
For the stronger, brighter angel, w^ho loved her 

best, was Death. 

G. W. Bethune. 



140 Children in Heaven 



TO a lady in Brooklyn, whose daughter 
had suddenly died, Mrs. Browning wrote : 

" I receive your letter, read it, hold it in 
my hands, with a sympathy deeply moved. 
No, wx had not heard of your loss. Hearing 
of such things makes us silent before God. 
What must it be to experience them? I have 
suflFered myself very heavy afflictions, but the 
affliction of the mother I have not suffered, 
and I shut my eyes to the image of it. Only 
where Christ brings His cross He brings His 
presence, and where He is, none are desolate, 
and there is no room for despair. At the 
darkest, you have felt a Hand through the 
dark, closer perhaps and tenderer than any 
touch dreamt of at noon. As He knows 
His own, so He knows how to comfort them 
— using sometimes the very grief itself, and 
straining it to the sweetness of a faith unat- 
tainable to those ignorant of any grief. 

" It seems to me that a nearer insight into 
the spiritual world has been granted to this 



Children in Heaven, 141 

generation, so that — by whatever process we 
have got our conviction — we no longer deal 
with vague abstractions, half closed, half shad- 
owy, in thinking of departed souls. There 
is now something warm and still familiar in 
those beloved of ours, to whom we yearn out 
past the grave — not cold and ghostly as they 
seemed once, but human, sympathetic, with 
well-known faces. They are not lost utterly 
to us even on earth ; a little farther off, and 
that is all ; farther off, too, in a very low sense. 
Quite apart from all foolish, spiritual (so-called) 
literature, we find these impressions very gen- 
erally diffused among theological thinkers of 
the most calmly reasoning order." 

Mrs. E. B. Browning. 



TWO on earth, — their litde feet 
Glance like sunbeams round the door ; 
Two in heaven, whose lips repeat 
Words of blessings evermore. 



142 Children in Heaven. 

Two on earth, at shut of day, 
Softly sink to cradled rest ; 

Two in heaven, more blessed than they, 
Slumber on the Saviour's breast ! 

Two, with crowns of budding flowers, 
Dance the summer skies beneath ; 

Two, in heaven's unfading bowers. 
Wear the glory like a wreath. 

Two on earth, wdiose merry call 
Stirs my heart to gladness now" ; 

Two in heaven, whose kisses fall, 
Through the silence, on my brow. 

Two on earth, — oh, day by day, 
Kneeling at my Father's throne, 
Thus with pleading heart I pray, 

Shepherd, make my lambs Thy own. 



a 



Two, within that sweeter home, 
Have no need of earthly prayer ; 

There, WMth angel-songs, they roam 
Through the pastures green and fair. 



Children in Heaven. 143 

Oft I gaze, with tearful eyes, 

Where the churchyard daisies blow; 

Oft my prayers are only sighs. 
Yearning for my children so. 

Yet I know the Shepherd's hand 
Led them home in tender love ; 

Mine is sure a blessed band, 
Two on earth and two above. 

Emily C. Huntingdon. 



LUTHER was called to part with Magda- 
len at the age of fourteen. She was a 
most endearing child, and united the firmness 
and perseverance of the father, with the gen- 
tleness and delicacy of the mother. When 
she grew very ill, Luther said, "Dearly do I 
love her ! but O my God, if it be Thy will to 
take her hence, I resign her to Thee without 
a murmur." 

He then approached the bed, and said to 
her, "My dear little daughter, my beloved 



144 Children in Heaven. 

Magdalen, you would willingly remain with 
your earthly father ; but if God calls you, 
you will also willingly go to your Heavenly 
Father." 

She replied, "Yes, dear father; it is as 
God pleases." 

"Dear little girl," he exclaimed, "oh, how 
I love her ! The spirit is willing, but the 
flesh is weak." 

He then took the Bible, and read to her the 
passage in Isaiah: "Thy dead men shall live, 
together with my dead body shall they arise. 
Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust, for 
thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth 
shall cast out the dead." 

He then said, "My daughter, enter thou 
into thy resting-place in peace." 

She turned her dying eyes towards him, 
and said, with touching simplicity, " Yes, 
father." 

The night preceding her death, Catharine, 
worn out with watching, reclined her head 
on the sick bed, and slept. When she awoke, 



Children in Heaven. I45 

she appeared much agitated ; and, as soon as 
Philip Melancthon arrived, she hastened to 
him and told him her dream. 

"I saw two young men, who seemed to be 
clad in robes of light, enter the room. I 
pointed to Magdalen, who lay quietly sleep- 
ing, and made a sign to them not to disturb 
her ; but they said they came to conduct her 
to the bridal ceremony." 

Melancthon was much moved, and after- 
wards said to his wife, "These were holy 
angels that Catharine saw in her dream ; and 
they will conduct the virgin to her bridal in 
the celestial kingdom." 

When her last moments were near, she 
raised her eyes tenderly to her parents, and 
begged them not to weep for her. '^ I go," 
said she, "to my Father in heaven;" and a 
sweet smile irradiated her dying countenance. 
Luther threw himself upon his knees, weep- 
ing bitterly, and fervently prayed God to 
spare her to them. In a few moments she 
expired in the arms of her father. Catharine, 
10 



146 Children in Heaven. 

unequal to repressing the agony of her sor- 
row, was at a Httle distance, perhaps unable 
to witness the last long-drawn breath. When 
the scene was closed, Luther repeated fer- 
vently, "The will of God be done! yes, she 
has gone to her Father in heaven." Philip 
Melancthon, who, wdth his wife, was present, 
said, "Parental love is an image of the Di- 
vine love, impressed on the hearts of men ; 
God does not love the beings He has created 
less than parents love their children." 

When they were about putting the child 
into the coffin, the father said, " Dear little 
Magdalen, I see thee now lifeless, but thou 
wilt shine in the heavens as a star ! I am 
joyous in spirit, but in the flesh most sorrow- 
ful. It is w^onderful to realize that she is 
happy, — better taken care of, — and yet to 
be so sad." 

Then turning to her mother, who was bit- 
terly weeping, he said, " Dear Catharine, re- 
member where she has gone ; — ah ! she has 
made a blessed exchange. The heart bleeds. 



Children in Heaven. 147 

without doubt, — it is natural that it should ; 
but the spirit, the immortal spirit, rejoices. 
Happy are those who die young ; children do 
not doubt — they believe ; with them all is 
trust ; they fall asleep." 

When the funeral took place, and the people 
were assembled to convey the body to its last 
home, some friends said they sympathized with 
him in his affliction. " Be not sorrowful for 
me," he replied, '^ I have sent a saint to 
heaven. Oh, may we all die such a death ! 
Gladly would I accept it now ! " 

To his friend Justus Jonas, he soon after 
wrote the following letter : — 

" Sej>tember 23, 1542. 

" I doubt not thou hast heard of the birth 
of my little Magdalen into the kingdom of 
Christ. My wife and I ought only to think 
of rendering thanks, for her happy transition 
and peaceful end, — for by it she has es- 
caped the power of the flesh, the world, the 
Turks, and the devil ; yet nature is strong, 



148 Children in Heaven. 

and I cannot support this event without tears 
and groans, or, to speak more truly, without 
a broken heart. On my very soul are en- 
graved the. looks, the w^ords, the gestures — 
during her life, and on the bed of death — 
of my obedient, my loving child ! Even the 
death of Christ (and what are all deaths in 
comparison with that?) cannot turn away my 
thoughts from hers as it ought. She was, as 
thou knowest, lovely in her character, and 
full of tenderness." 

Luther's, Christinas Tree, 



MY children ! my children ! they clustered all 
round me, 
Like a* rampart, which sorrow could never break 

through ; 
Each change in their beautiful lives only bound me 
In a spell of delight, which no care could undo. 

But the eldest ! O Father, how glorious he was ! 
With the soul looking out through his fountain- 
like eyes ! 



Children in Heaven. 



149 



Thou lovest Thy Sole-born ! and had I not cause 
The treasure Thou gavest me, Father, to prize? 

But the lily-bed lies beaten down by the rain, 
And the tallest is gone from the place where he 

grew ; 
My tallest! my fairest! Oh, let me complain; 
For all life is unroofed, and the tempests beat 

through. 

I murmur not. Father ! my will is with Thee ; 
I knew at the first that my darling was Thine : 
Hadst Thou taken him earlier, O Father — but 



ee 1 



Thou hadst left him so long that I dreamed he 
was mine. 

Thou hast taken the fairest, — he was fairest to me : 
Thou hast taken the fairest, — 'tis always Thy way : 
Thou hast taken the dearest ; was he dearest to 

Thee? 
Thou art welcome, thrice welcome; — yet woe is 

the day ! 



150 Children in Heaven. 

Thou hast honored my child by the speed of Thy 

choice ; 
Thou hast crowned him with glory, overwhelmed 

him with mirth ; 
He sings up in heaven, with his sweet-sounding 

voice, 
While I, a saint's mother, am weeping on earth. 

Yet, O for that voice, which is thrilling through 

heaven. 
One moment my ears with its music to slake ! 
Oh, no ! not for worlds would I have him re-given, 
Yet I long to have back what I would not re-take. 

I grudge him, and grudge him not ! Father, Thou 

know^est 
The foolish confusion of innocent sorrow ; 
It is thus in Thy husbandry. Saviour ! Thou sowest 
The grief of to-day, for the grace of to-morrow. 

Go, go with thy God, with thy Saviour, my child ! 
Thou art His ; I am His ; and thy sisters are His ; 
But to-day thy fond mother with sorrow is wild, ^- 
To think that her son is an angel in bliss ! 



Children in Heaven, 151 

Oh, forgive me, dear Saviour, on heaven's bright 

shore, 
Should I still in my child find a separate joy ; 
While I lie in the light of Thy face evermore, 
May I think heaven brighter because of my boy ? 

F. W. Faber. 



HOW earnestly did you implore the physi- 
cian to search for some means of heal- 
ing the disease, and relieving the pain of your 
precious sufferer ! How did you pray God 
to bless the remedies used ! But the Great, 
the Good Physician, who healed the sick, and 
lame, and blind, and leprous, with His touch, 
— who stood beside the tomb. Conqueror of 
Death, the Resurrection and the Life, — has 
heard your prayer, and restored your little one 
to immortal health and beauty, bearing it, in 
the arms of His holy angels, to a blessed 
clime, where all is new and bright and se- 
rene and full of joy, that never again it might 
know the ills of mortal being. Very sweet 



152 Children in Heaven. 

was it for you to look upon your child, laugh- 
ing in your arms, or playing with its fellows 
on the shaded sod and among the flowers ; 
but now it is rejoicing on its Heavenly Fa- 
ther's bosom, or under the Tree of Life, in 
the sinless, thornless, unfading paradise of the 
redeemed. 

Would you call' it back to the sick bed, 
the uncertain life, the certain death, which 
must await it here? Would you replace the 
crown encircling its brow by wrinkles and 
gray hairs ? hush its glad songs for the sigh- 
ing, the groaning, the moans of earth? Would 
vou take it from the arms of God, even to 
your own? Would you ask that it might 
return, to become itself a parent, and suffer 
the anguish which is now tearing your heart- 
strings? No, Christian parent, you loved your 

child ; you love it still too well ! 

G. W. Bethune. 



Children in Heaven, 153 



THEY are going — only going; 
Jesus called them long ago ; 
All the wintry time they're passing 

Softly as the fallen snow. 
When the violets in the spring-time 

Catch the azure of the sky, 
They are carried out, to slumber 
Sweetly where the violets lie. 

They are going — only going; 

When .with Summer earth is drest ; 
In their cold hands holding roses, 

Folded to each silent breast. 
When the Autumn hangs red. banners 

Out above the harvest sheaves, 
They are going — ever going — 

Thick and fast, like falling leaves. 

All along the mighty ages. 
All adown the solemn time, 

They have taken up their homeward 
March to that serener clime, 



154 Children in Heaven. 

Where the watching, waiting angels 
Lead them from the shadow dim, 

To the brightness of His presence, 
Who has called them unto Him. 

They are going — only going — 

Out of pain and into bliss ; 
Out of sad and sinful weakness 

Into perfect holiness. 
Snowy brov/s — no care shall shade them ; 

Bright eyes — tears shall never dim; 
Rosy lips — no time shall fade them; 

Jesus called them unto Him. 

Little hearts forever stainless, — 

Little hands as pure as they, — 
Little feet, by angels guided. 

Never a forbidden way ! 
They are going — ever going — 

Leaving many a lonely spot ; 
But 'tis Jesus who has called them — 

Suffer, and forbid them not. 

Lyra AngUcana. 



Children in Heaven. 155 



WE need not too profoundly mourn when 
our children are removed, or, rather, 
however much we mourn our own loss, the 
bright certainty of their gain ought to lift us 
out of selfish grief. We can follow them, in 
thought, into their Father's mansions on high. 
To have a child in heaven is only to have 
our own hearts bound about with a golden cord, 
that is gently drawing our steps upwards, heav- 
enwards, homewards. It is only an inducement 
the more for us " to run the race " and pursue 
the path of our pilgrimage, that we may rejoin 
them where loving hearts shall know no part- 
ing, and kindred souls shall dwell together 
forever. Angel fingers beckon us onward, 
angel voices encourage us in the silent hours 
of trial and gloom, angel smiles cheer us in 
the dark valley ; and it is only all the sweeter 
to remember that some of them ma}^ be the 
little ones whom we have loved and given up 
to God. " I am a blossomless tree," sinks sadly 
into the loving heart that feels how much it 



156 Children in Heaven. 

has lost when its babe was taken from her 
arms. "I am the mother of an angel," may 
dissipate the darkness and wipe away the 
tears, mingle a smile with the weeping, pour 
balm into the gaping wound, and reveal the 
silver lining of the frowning cloud. 

Our Eternal Homes, 



I DO not pray, "Comfort me! comfort me!" 
For how should comfort be? 
Oh, — O that cooing mouth — that little whitehead ! 
No ; but I pray, " If it be not too late. 

Open to me the gate. 
That I may find my babe when I am dead, 

" Show me the path. I had forgotten Thee 

When I was happy and free. 
Walking down here in the gladsome light o' the 

sun ; 
But now I come and mourn ; oh, set my feet 

In the road to Thy blest seat. 
And for the rest, O God, Thy will be done." 

Jean Ingelow. 



Children in Heaven 



157 



OH, when a mother meets on high 
The babe she lost in infancy, 
Hath she not then, for i^ains and fears. 

The day of woe, the watchful night, — 
For all her sorrows, all her tears, 
An over-payment of delight? 

SOUTHEY. 




DEATH. 



Thou God of Love ! beneath Thy sheltering wings 

We leave our holy dead, 
To rest in hope I From this world's sufferings 

Their souls have fled! 

Oh, when our souls are burdened with the weight 

Of life, and all its woes, 
Let us remember them, and calmly wait 

For our life's close! 



(159) 




DEATH. 



'' ]\ /r^RTHA said to Him, I know that my 
-*-▼-*• brother shall rise again, in the resur- 
rection, at the last day. Jesus said unto her, 
/ am the resurrection and the life ; " and then 
showed what He meant, by bringing back 
Lazarus to life, unchanged, and as he had 
been before he died. 

Surely, if that miracle meant anything, if 
these words meant anything, it meant this : 
that those who die in the fear of God, and in 
the faith of Christ, do not really taste death ; 
that to them there is no death, but only a 
change of place, a change of state ; that they 
pass at once, and instantly, into some new 
life, with all their powers, all their feelings, 

II (ICl) 



1 62 Death. 



unchanged, — purified, doubtless, from earthly 
stains, but still the same living, thinking, 
active beings, while they were here on earth. 
I say active. The Bible says nothing about 
their sleeping till the Day of Judgment, as 
some have fancied. Rest they may ; rest 
they will, if they need rest. But what is the 
true rest? Not idleness, but peace of mind. 
To rest from sin, from sorrow, from fear, 
from doubt, from care, — this is the true rest. 
Above all, to rest from the worst weariness 
of all — knowing one's duty, and yet not being 
able to do it. That is true rest ; the rest of 
God, who works forever, and yet is at rest 
forever ; as the stars ,over our heads move 
forever, thousands of miles each day, and yet 
are at perfect rest, because they move orderly, 
harmoniously, fulfilling the law which God has 
given them. Perfect rest, in perfect work ; 
that surely is the rest of blessed spirits, till 
the final consummation of all things, when 
Christ shall have made up the number of His 
elect. 



Death. 163 



I hope that this is so. I trust that this is 
so. I think our Lord's great words can mean 
nothing less than this. And if it be so, what 
comfort for us who must die? What comfort 
for us who have seen others die, if death be 
but a new birth into some higher life ; if all 
that it changes in us is our body, — the mere 
shell and husk of us, — such a change as 
comes over the crawling caterpillar, which 
breaks its prison, and spreads its wings to 
the sun as a fair butterfly? Where is the 
sting of death, then, if death can sting, and 
poison, and corrupt nothing of us for which 
our friends have loved us ; nothing of us with 
which we could do service to men or God? 
Where is the victory of the grave, if, so far 
from the grave holding us down, it frees us 
from the very thing which holds us down — 
the mortal body? 

Death is not death, then, if it kills no part 
of us, save that which hindered us from per- 
fect life. Death is not death, if it raises us 
in a moment from darkness into light, from 



164 Death. 



weakness into strength, from sinfulness into 
holiness. Death is not death if it brings us 
nearer to Christ, who is the fount of life. 
Death is not death, if it perfects our faith by 
sight, and lets us behold Him in whom we 
have believed. Death is not death, if it gives 
us to those whom we have loved and lost, for 
whom we have lived, for whom we long to 
live again. Death is not death, if it joins the 
child to the mother who is gone before. Death 
is not death, if it takes away from that mother 
forever all a mother's anxieties, a mother's 
fears, and lets her see, in the gracious coun- 
tenance of her Saviour, a sure and certain 
pledge that those whom she has left behind 
are safe, — safe with Christ and in Christ, 
through all the chances and dangers of their 
mortal life. Death is not death, if it rids us 
of doubt and fear, of chance and change, of 
space and time, and all which space and time 
bring forth and then destroy. Death is not 
death ; for Christ has conquered death for 
Himself, and for those who trust in Him. 

KiNGSLEY. 



Death, 165 



BUT, Lord, I am a trouble ! and I sit. 
And I am lonesome, and the nights are few 
That any think to come and draw a chair. 
And sit in my poor place and talk a while. 
Why should they come, forsooth ? Only the 

wind 
Knocks at my door ; oh, long and loud it knocks ; 
The only thing God made that has a mind 
To enter in." 

Yea thus the old man spake ; 
These were the last words of his aged mouth. 
But One did knock. One came to sup with 

him, — 
That humble, weak, old man, — knocked at his 

door 
In the rough pauses of the laboring wind. 
I tell you that One knocked while it was dark, 
Save where their foaming passion had made 

white 
Those livid, seething billows. What He said 
In that poor place, where He did talk a while, 
I cannot tell : but this I am assured — 
That when the neighbors came the morrow morn. 



1 66 Death 



What time the wind had bated, and the sun 

Shone on the old man's floor, they saw the smile 

He passed away in, and they said, '' He looks 

As he had woke and seen the face of Christ, 

And with that rapturous smile held out his arms 

To come to Him ! " 

Jean Ingelow. 



THEY knelt in silent anguish by her bed, 
And could not weep ; but calmly there she 
lay. 
All pain had left her ; and the sun's last ray 
Shone through upon her, warming into red 
The shady curtains. In her heart she said, 
'^ Heaven opens ; I leave these and go away : 
The Bridegroom calls, — shall the bride seek 
to stay?" 
Then low upon her breast she bowed her head. 
O lily-flower, O gem of priceless worth, 

O dove with patient voice and patient eyes, 
O fruitful vine amid a land of dearth, 
O maid replete with loving purities. 
Thou bowedst down thy head with friends on earth, 
To raise it with the saints in Paradise. 

Christina Rossetti. 



Death. 167 



WHEREFORE weepest thou, sorrowing 
widow, by the coffin of thy husband? 
And thou, faithful child, on the grave of thy 
father, th}^ friend? And thou, disconsolate 
mother, by the bier of thy infant? What is it 
that they bear to the grave ? Is it not merely 
the mortal coil? Or can spirits die and moul- 
der away in the ground? Why fixest thou 
thine eyes, sore with weeping, on the earth? 
Ah ! that which hath fled from thee, that 
which thy eye seeketh, is not there ! Lift 
thine eyes to heaven, let them penetrate the 
boundless universe ! Thy friend is there. The 
m3^sterious power w^hich animated the dust, 
and which we call soul, — the same that so 
often smiled lovingly on thee through tender 
ej^es, that spoke to thee from friendly lips, — 
now with solemn earnestness, now w^ith joy- 
ful mirth, — it has gone to God, is w^ith God, 
has entered into more glorious connections, 
into higher spheres of action, is more elevated, 
freer, happier, than thou ! Why, then, turn 



1 68 Death. 



thine eyes upon the grave? The ashes that lie 
buried there were only a borrowed raiment, 
— did not belong to the immortal being, — 
were but an instrument, useful for a short time 
here below, now no longer needed. The soul 
has finished its course in this world, has 
fought the fight, and kept its faith. Hence- 
forth it wears the crown of immortality. Man 
thyself, O mourner, and thou, also, prepare 
to fight the good fight. The loved one whom 
thou hast lost will one day advance to meet 
thee at the gate of eternity, to greet thee as 
a glorified companion, and will cry unto thee, 
Here also God is thy God ! 

O God ! O Father ! Thou art also my God, 
m}^ Father; why, then, should I be bowed 
down with grief? Why weakly yield myself 
up before my course is finished, before I have 
fought the good fight to the end? O, give 
me strength — give me power! whatever suf- 
fering Thou mayst impose, I will bear it, for 
it will bring me nearer to Thee ! 

ZSCHOKKE. 



Death, 169 



BLESSED are ye, O glorified spirits, who 
have already overcome ! O ye beloved 
of Jesus ! ye saints of God! in solemn silence 
I will celebrate the memory of yom' triumph 
also. Ye have fought the fight ; I am still 
wrestling with sin. Ye are rejoicing, hav- 
ing reached the goal ; I am still weeping at 
my short-comings. 

Blessed are ye ; ye have conquered death 
in Jesus and w^ith Jesus ! The resurrection of 
the Lord became your resurrection. He has 
risen; He lives; and ye live with Him. 

He lives ! He is risen ! The heavenly as- 
surance that this gives us, that we also shall 
rise from the dead, quickens the wounded 
hearts of the disconsolate mourners who de- 
spair at their lost joys. To us also God has 
promised immortal life ; our souls shall not be 
victims of the grave. 

ZSCHOKKE. 



170 Death. 



OH ! the hour when this material 
Shall have vanished like a cloud ! 
When amid the wide ethereal, 
All the invisible shall crowd, 
And the naked soul, surrounded 

With innumerous hosts of light. 
Triumph in the view unbounded, 
And adore the Infinite ! 



In what sudden, strange transition, 

By what new and finer sense, 
Shall she grasp the mighty vision. 

And receive its influence? 
Angels guard the new immortal 

Through the wonder-teeming space, 
To the everlasting portal. 

To the spirit's resting-place. 



Will she there no fond emotion. 
Nought of early love retain? 

Or, absorbed in pure devotion, 
Will no mortal trace remain? 



Death, 171 



Can the grave those ties dissever, 
With the very heartstrings twined? 

Must she part, and part forever, 
With the friend she leaves behind? 



No ; the past she still remembers ; 

Faith and hope surviving too, 
Ever w^atch those sleeping embers, 

Which must rise and live anew ; 
For the widowed, lonely spirit 

Mourns till she be clothed afresh ; 
Longs ferfectio7i to inherit, 

And to triumph in the flesh. 

Angels, let the ransomed stranger 

In your tender care be blest. 
Hoping, trusting, free from danger. 

Till the trumpet end her rest ; 
Till the trump, which shakes creation. 

Through the circling heaven shall roll ; 
Till the day of consummation, 

Till the bridal of the soul. 

COXDER. 



1 72 Death 



THERE is in human history an unwritten 
chapter, which is yet thronged with mys- 
terious incidents, half fearfully remembered by 
their witnesses. All who have frequently stood 
beside the bed of the dying must have been 
thrilled with singular testimonies that the dy- 
ing are conscious of the presence of other than 
mortal visitants. 

Is it not a grand and consolatory conviction, 
that when Christians are passing away from 
their earth-work to their eternal homes, then 
the attenuating links that chain consciousness 
to time and day are melting away, one by 
one, and their consciousness becomes, by the 
gradual enfranchisement of a lingering death, 
more and more spiritual? Thus sinking to 
sleep as to earth, they are awaking to heaven ; 
growing unmindful of the lower and outer 
existence, they are arousing to the inner and 
spiritual life ; becoming blind to the clay-en- 
veloped forms of friends standing round their 
failing 'bodies, they see already, as through a 



Death. 173 



mist, the brighter beings who are to be their 
everlasting companions, — some of whom may 
be ah'eady welcoming their coming. Their 
hearing waxing dim, and unconscious to the 
melody of beloved voices whispering in their 
natural ears, they can become aware of a 
sweeter music, sung by more exquisite voices 
still, of the beloved who have gone before 
them : in fine, dying unto earth, they are 
becoming alive unto heaven. Does this not 
fully and worthil}^ explain the solemn scenes of 
thousands of death-beds? — visions of spiritual 
visitants ministering to the dying ; resplendent 
light surrounding glorious beings \\\\o cast*no 
shadow ; gorgeous scenery, bright with never- 
fading beauty ; voices thrilling in tenderness ; 
music mysterious in harmony ; the recognition 
of dear familiar faces, fondly loved in the 
bygones ; or the foreknowledge which some 
have received of the exact moment of their 
departure ! There are few families who have 
not some tale of this kind to tell, some testi- 



174 Death 



mony to add to this proof of the contiguity 
of the spiritual world. 

Our Eternal Homes. 



IT lies around us like a cloud, — 
A world we do not see ; 
Yet the sweet closing of an eye 
May bring us there to be. 

Its gentle breezes -fan our cheek ; 

Amid our worldly cares 
Its gende voices whisper love, 

And mingle with our prayers. 

Sweet hearts around us throb and beat, 
Sweet helping hands are stirred. 

And palpitates the veil between 
With breathings almost heard. 

The silence — awful, sweet, and calm — 
They have no power to break ; 

For mortal words are not for them 
To utter or partake. 



Death. 175 



So thin, so soft, so sweet they glide, 
So near to press they seem, 

They seem to lull us to our rest, 
And melt into our dream. 

And in the hush of rest they bring 

'Tis easy now to see 
How lovely and how sweet a pass 

The hour of death may be, — 

To close the eye, and close the ear, 

Rapt in a trance of bliss. 
And gently dream in loving arms, 

To swoon to that, — from this ; 

Scarce knowing if we wake or sleep, 
Scarce asking where v^^e are, 

To feel all evil sink away, 
All sorrow and all care. 

Sweet souls around us ! watch us still ; 

Press nearer to our side ; 
Into our thoughts, into our prayers, 

With gentle helpings glide. 



176 Death, 



Let death between us be as nought, 

A dried and vanished stream : 
Your joy be the reality, 

Our suffering life the dream. 

Mrs. H. B. Stowe. 



BY this time, what was mortal of our dear 
friend has been consigned to its resting- 
place in darkness and silence ; and I can pen- 
sively sympathize in the profound musings in 
which your spirit is drawn to follow the immor- 
tal part. Oh, what is the transition? Whither 
is that immortal essence gone? In what higher 
manner does it live, and know, and exert its 
faculties, no longer involved in the dark tab- 
ernacle of dying flesh? Our departed friend 
does not come to reveal it to us. But enough 
to know that it is a deliverance from all pains, 
and weakness, and fears, — a deliverance from 
sin, that most dreadful thing in the universe. 
And it is to be past death — to have accom- 
plished that one amazing act which we have 



Death, 177 



yet undone before us, and are to do. It is to 
know what that awful and mysterious thing 
is, and that its pains and terrors are gone past 
forever. " I have died," our beloved friend 
says now, with exultation, " and I live to die 
no more ! I have conquered through the 
blood of the Lamb." 



IT will often occur as an idea nowise irra- 
tional or improbable, that perhaps the 
loved and departed friend, in what is, as to 
our perceptions, an absence entire and abso- 
lute, may not really have become a stranger. 
I have often thought it highly probable that 
the departed friends who took a warm and 
faithful interest, may do so still. A benevolent 
remembrance of us they necessarily have. But 
why not much more than that? Why should 
it appear improbable that they have the means 
of being apprised of our situation and conduct, 
and even our feelings ; and that they maintain, 
in a continuance, a friendly interest for us ; 
12 



178 Death. 



watching, as it were, our progress towards the 
appointed moment of our passing after them 
through death? Some good and wise men 
have even maintained it as not improbable 
that they may be employed in kind offices for 
their pious survivors, in humbler cooperation 
with angelic agents. We cannot know it; but 
we may be allowed to indulge a pleasing and 
consolatory idea which contradicts no principle 
of reason and doctrine of revelation. At the 
very least we may feel confidently assured that 
they retain us so much in mind as to feel a 
lively interest in our final w^elfare, and in the 
anticipation of our transition to their society. 
The day of resurrection is to be looked for- 
ward to as the consummation of the felicity 
of the followers of Christ. But that event 
must certainly be far distant ; and I sometimes 
wonder that religious teachers advert so little, 
in any distinct terms, to the state immediately 
after death, which inspiration has so expressly 
asserted to be a state of consciousness and of 
happiness to faithful souls. 



John Foster. 



Death. 179 



AS one who held herself a part 
Of all she saw, and let her heart 

Against the household bosom lean, 
Upon the motley-braided mat 
Our youngest and our dearest sat, 
Lifting her large, sweet, asking eyes, 

Now bathed within the fadeless green 
And holy peace of Paradise. 
O, looking from some heavenly hill, 

Or from the shade of saintly palms. 

Or silver reach of river calms. 
Do those large eyes behold me still? 
With me one little year ago : — 
The chill weight of the w^inter's snow 

For months upon her grave has lain : 
And now, when summer south winds blow, 

And brier and harebell bloom again, 
I tread the pleasant paths w^e trod, 
I see the violet-sprinkled sod' 
Whereon she leaned, too frail and weak. 
The hill-side flowers she loved to seek. 
Yet following me where'er I went. 
With dark eyes full of love's content. 
The birds are glad ; the brier-rose fills 



i8o Death, 



The air with sweetness ; all the hills 

Stretch green to June's unclouded sky ; 

But still I wait with ear and eye 

For something gone which should be nigh, 

A loss in all familiar things, 

In flower that blooms and bird that sings. 

And yet, dear heart ! remembering thee, 

Am I not richer than of old? 
Safe in thy immortality, 

What change can reach the wealth I hold? 

What chance can mar the pearl and gold 
Thy love hath left in trust with me? 
And while in life's late afternoon. 

Where cool and long the shadows grow, 
I walk to meet the night that soon 

Shall shape and shadow overflow, 
I cannot feel that thou art far, 
Since near at need the angels are ; 
And when the sunset gates unbar. 

Shall I not see thee waiting stand. 
And, white against the evening star, 

The welcome of thy beckoning hand? 

J. G. Whittier. 



Death. i8i 



TO be a believer, to have clear views, to 
love God, to know^ one's self accepted, is 
not enough to make one welcome, with radiant 
smile, the messenger of the livid wing. Many 
a strong man has felt his courage sink, many 
a bright flame has grown pale. 

St. Paul, he who used to say, "^ To die is 
gain," — St. Paul in Asia, despairing even of 
life^ and then saved, — glorifies God, who has 
delivered him from so great a danger ; who 
delivers us, he adds, and in whom we trust 
that He will yet deliver. 

In the fortress at Jerusalem, this same Paul, 
learning that the Jews are laying snares for 
him, has the governor apprised of it, that he 
may watch over his safety. At Caesarea, he 
takes the same precaution. 

In the midst of the tempest, when the ship 
that carries the apostle to Italy, dismasted, 
broken by the force of the waves, is about to 
fall to pieces, forsaken by its crew, Paul de- 
tains the sailors : " Except these abide in the 
ship, ye cannot be saved." 



1 82 Death. 



At Rome, before Nero, on the occasion of 
his first trial, he writes, " And I was delivered 
from the mouth of the lion." 

Is Paul afraid to die ? Not so ! But, thank 
God ! Paul is a man. Paul has times when 
life seems to him sweet, his mission grand ; 
Paul, too, has seasons when the gloomy aspect 
of death presents itself to his mind. Were it 
not so, he would no longer be one of us ; we 
should not understand him. 

The heavenly visage of a Stephen stoned to 
death rouses my energy ; what the Lord has 
done for him. He may do for me also. But 
if the hosts of the redeemed presented only 
such lofty shapes as these, — not an}^ pallor, 
not any shadow, — I should feel myself, as it 
were, a stranger in so holy a company ; a 
secret voice would whisper to me, " Art thou 
indeed one of them?" 

Now, on the contrary, I know that one 
may die humbly, silently, perhaps timidly ; 
may be more sorry for the sins committed than 
thankful for the pardon given, and neverthe- 



Death. 183 



less and certainly belong to Jesus. Not to 
all Christians are granted joyous and trium- 
phant deaths. The most esteemed among 
them, — those whose great deeds have been 
the most widely spread by fame, w^hose voice 
has made many hearts thrill — may depart ob- 
scurely, shuddering at the vanity of all terrestri- 
al glory, holding indeed the hand of Jesus, but 
trembling the while. And at the same hour, 
some unknown woman, some little child who 
lends an innocent ear to the divine promises, 
shall behold the heavens opened, soar away 
on unflagging wing, and greet their last day 

with hallelujahs. 

Madame de Gasparin. 



ALONE ! to land alone upon that shore ! 
Knowing so well we can return no more ; 
No voice or face of friend, 
None with us to attend 
Our disembarking on that awful strand, 
But to arrive alone in such a land ! 



184 Death 



Alone ! to land alone upon that shore ! 
To begin alone to live forevermore, 

To have no one to teach 

The manners or the speech 
Of that new^ life, or put us at our ease ; — 
O that we might die in pairs or companies ! 

Alone? The God we know is on that shore, 
The God of whose attractions we know more 

Than of those who may appear 

Nearest and dearest here ; 
Oh, is he not the life-long Friend we know 
More privately than any friend below? 

Alone? The God we trust is on that shore, 
The Faithful One, whom we have trusted more, 

In trials and in woes. 

Than we have trusted those 
On whom we leaned most in our earthly strife; 
Oh, we shall trust Him more in that new life! 

Alone? The God we love is on that shore; — 
Love not enough, yet whom we love far more, 

And whom we loved all through, 

And with a love more true 



Death. 185 



Than other loves, — yet now shall love him more : — 
True love of Hhn begins upon that shore ! 

So not alone we land upon that shore : 
'Twill be as though we had been there before ; 

We shall meet more we know 

Than we can meet below, 
And find our rest like some returning dove. 
And be at home at once with our eternal love ! 

F. W. Faber. 



NEVER let us forget that constitutional tem- 
perament, and the depressing influences 
of many forms of disease, may make dark 
and distressful the dying bed of the very best 
believer. Perhaps, even with true Christians, 
the death is as the life was ; the evening is 
what the day was, "not clear, nor dark,'' as 
the general rule. There are blessed hopes, 
but there are also distressing fears. " At 
evening time it shall be light." And shall we 
say then, that this text does not speak truth ? 
No, far from that.- The light docs come ; and 



1 86 Death. 



it comes at evening ; but evening is the close 
of day ; and the light may perhaps not beam 
forth until day has entirely closed. Not upon 
this side of time may the blessed' promise find 
its fulfilment. The foot may be dipped in the 
chill, dark river before the heavenly light has 
shone upon the face. The eye may be blind 
to dearest faces and forms, ere the Sun of 
Righteousness dawns; as in the natural world 
the darkest, coldest hour is that before the 
daybreak. The tongue may never be able 
to tell surviving loved ones how the shadows 
fled away when the dark valley was passed, 
till they have passed through that darkness' 
too. Yes, to the believer, true as that God 
liveth, " at the evening time there shall be 
light," if not in this world, then in a better. 
Bowing his head to pass under the dark por- 
tal, the believer lifts it up on the other side, 
in the presence and the light of God. It is 
but a single step from the darkness of death 
into the light of immortality ; and if the even- 
ing should remain gloomy to its very end, all 



Death. 187 



the brighter will seem the glory when the 
latest breath has parted. I told you how that 
Christian poet passed away almost in despair, 
— how the gloom that overshadowed his spirit 
endured all but to the end ; but even in the 
last moment there came a wonderful change, 
and they tell us how even on his dead face 
there remained, till it was hidden forever, a 
look of bright, and beautiful, and sudden sur- 
prise ; the light at evening had been long in 
coming; but oh, it had come at last I 

Boyd. 



THOU inevitable day, 
When a voice to me shall say, 
'' Thou must rise and come away. 

All thine other journeys past, 
Gird thee, and make ready fast 
For thy longest and thy last." 

Day deep hidden from our sight, 

An impenetrable night, 

Who may guess of thee aright? 



1 88 Death 



Shall I lay my drooping head 

On some loved lap ; round my bed 

Prayer be made and tears be shed? 

Or at distance from mine own, — 
Name and kin alike unknown, — 
Make my solitary moan? 

Little skills it where or how, 
If thou comest then or now, 
With a smooth or angry brow. 

Come thou must, and we must die : 
Jesus, Saviour, stand Thou by 
When that last sleep seals our eye. 

R. C. Trench. 



THE inexpressibly afFectionate looks of the 
dying fix sometimes a recollection more 
precious than any treasures. Tender mes- 
sages to the absent, grateful glances in return 
for little attentions, the fervent kiss, the sweet, 
indescribable smile, the grasp of the hand in 



Death. 189 



the act of departure, — who has not witnessed 
all these, if he has been often at Christian 
death-beds ? 

This dying love for friends reveals itself 
peculiarly in the desire, the hope, and the 
assurance of future reunion. It reaches to 
the dead as well as the surviving, and exults 
with a peculiar rapture in the approaching 
meeting with such as stand already on the 
everlastincT shore. A few hours before the 
death of Luther, he rejoiced in this prospect. 
"We shall, I think," said he, "be renewed in 
the other life through Christ, and shall much 
more perfectly recognize our parents, wives, 
and children." Melancthon, a few days before 
his death, told Camerarius that he trusted their 
friendship should be cultivated and perpetu- 
ated in another world. 

Recollections of dear departed friends come 
often with such a vividness, that, looking on, 
we are almost persuaded to deem them near. 
The aged Hannah More, in her last distress, 
stretched out her arms, as if catching at some 



190 Death 



object, uttered the name of her deceased sister, 

cried, "Joy ! " and sank into a state from which 

she never revived. 

George Burgess. 



THE excellent Sir William Forbes, the 
biographer of Beattie, uttered this : "Tell 
those," said hcj " that are drawing down to 
the bed of death, from my experience, that it 
has no terrors ; that in the hour when it is 
most wanted, there is mercy with the Most 
High ; and that some change takes place 
which fits the soul to meet its God." When 
the loyal Earl of Derby came to his execu- 
tion, although he had said, in previous times, 
that he could die in fight, but knew not how 
it might be on the scaffold, he now said that 
he could lay his head on the block as cheer- 
fully as on his pillow. " Let my people 
know," said the pious Arch-deacon Aylmer, 
" that their pastor died undaunted, and not 
afraid of death. I bless my God that I have 



Death. 191 



no fear, no doubt, no reluctation, but an as- 
sured confidence in the sin-overcoming merits 
of Jesus Christ." So said President Finley, 
''Give my love to the people of Princeton; 
tell them that I am going to die, and that I 
am not afraid of death." " Oh, do not fear 
to die," said Mrs. East, in dying; "you will 
find the Word of God sure ; all will be ful- 
filled, and you will find it so." These were 
the words of Haliburton : "I, a poor, weak, 
timorous man, once as much afraid of death 
as any, — I, that have been many years under 
the terror of death, — come now, in the mercy 
of God, and by the power of His grace, com- 
posedly and with joy to look death in the 
face." 

It often appears that exactly those from 
whom constitutional courage or philosophic 
firmness could least be expected, go down 
into the valley of death with most complete 
triumph over their past apprehensions. In 
the recollections of many, some such example 
of a dying friend will occur with convincing 



192 Death. 



power and tenderness. They tell us that this 
absence of fear is no fruit of nature, of habit, 
or of strenuous effort; but the gift of Him 
who gave to death its terrors, when He made 
it the doom of sin ; and who takes those ter- 
rors away when sin is blotted out through 

the blood of the Lamb. 

George Burgess. 



> 

OH, it is sweet to think 
Of those that are departed, 
While murmured Aves sink 
To silence tender-hearted ; 
While tears that have no pain 

Are tranquilly distilling, 
And the dead live again 

In hearts that love is filling. 

Yet not as in the days 

Of earthly ties we love them ; 
For they are touched with rays 

From light that is above them ; 
Another sweetness shines 

Around their well-known features ; 



Death. 193 



God with His glory signs 

His dearly-ransomed creatures. 

Yes, they are more our own 

Since now they are God's only ; 
And each one that has gone 

Has left our heart less lonely. 
He mourns not seasons fled 

Who now in Him possesses 
Treasures of many dead 

In their dear Lord's caresses. 

Dear dead ! they have become 

Like guardian angels to us ; 
And distant heaven^ like home, 

Through them begins to woo us. 
Love that was earthly wings 

Its flight to holier places ; 
The dead are sacred things 

That multiply our graces. 

They whom we loved on earth 
Attract us now to heaven ; 

Who shared our grief and mirth 
Back to us now are given. 
13 



194 ' Death. 



They move with noiseless foot 
Gravely and sw^eetly round us, 

And their soft touch hath cut 

Full many a chain that bound us. 

O dearest dead ! to Heaven 

With grudging sighs w^e gave you, 
To Him ! — be doubts forgiven ! — 
Who took you there to save you ! 

Faber. 
— »<>• 



DEATH has revelations such as this. You 
who have seen a beloved one die, you 
are familiar with a transformation that yet did 
not interfere with his identity — that left him 
still your own. 

You remember well, do you not? the serene 
radiance of his expression. You beheld his 
face as it were that of an angel. Such was 
the aspect Stephen wore, w^hen they stoned 
him as he knelt, and in the open heavens saw 
Jesus standing on the right hand of God. 

But when the last breath is drawn, what 



Death, 195 



dignity, what ineffable serenity ! The body 
had sufiered much. It was old, perhaps in- 
firm, very wretched in every way. Death 
comes, and an ideal youth — the youth of 
immortality — descends upon the brow. 

There are flowers which only yield their 
fragrance to the night ; there are faces whose 
beauty only fully opens out in death. No 
more wrinkles ; no drawn, distorted linea- 
ments ; an expression of extreme humility, 
blended with gladness of hope ; a serene 
brightness ; and an ideal straightening of the 
outline, as if the Divine Finger, source of 
supreme beauty, had been laid there. You 
cannot take your eyes away. Dead, your 
loved one consoles you for the agony of hav- 
ing seen him suifer. His face, his inexpressi- 
ble grandeur, his smile, all say to you, "Be- 
lieve; yet a little while, and thou shalt see 

me again." 

Madame de Gasparin. 



196 Death. 



IF God has not permitted, between you and 
the dead, that exchange of thoughts for 
which you sigh, it is because, if He had, death 
w^ould not have been death. And then we 
should have made idols of our loved ones. 

I know a courier, swift and sure, who will 
carry us to the absent — Faith. He knows 
the road : have no fear, he will not stumble 
nor stray. 

For us, in our sorrow, there are promises, 
and glad intelligence of our dead. God has 
not shut them up in dark prison-houses. We 
can turn our eyes to the land they inhabit. 
No mirage — the country exists. No poet's 
rapture — the simplest see the clearest. 

Gazing on that land, our affections will take 
new life, and the bitterness of despair will 
vanish ; and when we return to earth, we 
shall bring back an imperishable joy in our 
hearts ; we shall be faithful to the dead with- 
out a murmur of revolt against God ; we shall 



Death. 197 



be grateful without egotism — submissive, not 

oblivious. 

Madame de Gasparin. 



THE loved and lost ! " Why do we call them 
lost, 
Because we miss them from our onward road? 
God's unseen angel o'er our pathway crossed, 
Looked on us all, and, loving them the most, 
Straightway relieved them from life's weary load. 

They are not lost ; they are within the door 

That shuts out loss, and every hurtful thing ; 
With angels bright, and loved ones gone before. 
In their Redeemer's presence evermore, 

And God himself their Lord, and Judge, and 
Kins:. 



And call we this a loss? Death makes no breach 

In love and sympathy, in hope and trust ; 
No outward sign or sound our. ears can reach, 
But there's an inward, spiritual speech. 

That greets us still, though mortal tongues be 
dust. 



198 Death. 



It bids us do the work that they hiid dov/n, 

Take up the song where they broke off the strain, 
So journeying till we reach the heavenly town, 
Wliere are laid up our treasures and our crown, 
And our lost loved ones wmU be found again. 

Lyra C eel est is. 



ARE the souls of departed saints, whether 
dismissed by an immediate or prolonged 
dissolution, instantly with the Lord? I mar- 
vel that the question should be for a moment 
mooted. Who, with an intelligent understand- 
ing of God's Word, can reasonably doubt it? 
I unhesitatingly reply in the affirmative, and 
proceed briefly to substantiate the truth. Our 
proposition is, Instant death, instant glory. 
I maintain, upon the authority, as I humbly 
believe, of God's Word, that the moment the 
redeemed spirit is released from the body, it 
enters upon a state of conscious, intelligent, 
and inconceivable happiness, — that death is 
not in any degree an insensible state of the 



Death, 199 



soul, — a sort of anaesthesia, or trance, or syn- 
cope of the spiritual and immortal part of our 
being. The Scriptures of truth distinctly 
teach, both directly and inferefitially, that the 
departure of the believer in Jesus is an en- 
trance into a life compared with which his 
present existence is a lingering death. "Ab- 
sent from the bod}', present with the Lord." 
To affirm that a sudden collapse of the vital 
powers, or the instant rupture of a small vessel 
in the brain, or an immediate cessation of the 
heart's action, has arrested in any degree the 
spiritual powers of the soul, — that the instant 
disencumberment of the casket has plunged 
the jewel into a yet deeper solitude and a pro- 
founder darkness, is a theory as unphilosophi- 
cal as it is unscriptural. The soul is not a 
mere appendage to our being, asking of the 
body leave to live ; nor is the body a neces- 
sary part of our immortal existence, apart from 
w^hich w^e but dream on in a kind of spiritual 
coma. No ! But the soul is our very being 
itself, essentially, proudly, sublimely, inde- 



200 Death. 



pendent of the body. " It is the soul that is 
you; the body is yours.^^ Our bodies, though 
purchased by the atonement of the Son of God, 
and inhabited by the Spirit, and destined to 
a glorious resurrection, are, in their present 
condition, drags, and not wings, to the soul. 
In death we lay aside the robes of mortality, 
as we do at night our outward vesture : and 
as the soul slumbers not during the suspen- 
sion of our external senses in sleep, but roams, 
expands, and expatiates in unknown worlds, 
proudly, maintaining and enjoying its indepen- 
dency of matter, so, when the last link is 
broken that bound it to earth, it claps its 
glad pinions and soars to heaven, w^aking the 
music of the spheres as it passes. " O death, 
where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy 
victory?" Our life and immortality are not 
two distinct things any more than are time and 
eternity. The one instantly glides into the 
other. The Christian's life is as a silvery 
stream pursuing its way through a checkered 
wilderness, sometimes winding, often cloudy; 



Death. 201 



but presently leaping from it into a resplendent 
waterfall, sparkling with a thousand hues, and 
murmuring the sweetest music ; then cours- 
ing through an infinitely rich and beautiful 
country, reflecting in its crystal and serenely 
gliding depths every object of loveliness it 
visits. Thus our future is but a continuation 
of our present, in a world more spiritual and 
genial — more beautiful and sublime. We are 
not to be immortal, — we are immortal ; so that, 
when we go hence, we carry with us, without 
even a momentary suspension, the conscious- 
ness, the intelligence, the moral relations, and 
spiritual character that we now have ; only 
exchanging partial sanctification for complete 
holiness ; an abject for an ennobled being ; a 
limited for a boundless range of thought, and 
feeling, and action ; corruption for incorrup- 
tion ; the image of the earthly for the per- 
fected image of the heavenly. 

WiNSLOW. 



202 Death. 



I SHINE in the light of God ; 
His image stamps my brow ; 
Through the shadows of death my feet have 
trod, 
And I reign in glory now. 
No breaking heart is here, 

No keen and thrilling pain. 
No wasted cheek, where the burning tear 
Hath rolled, and left its stain. 

" I have found the joys of heaven ; 

I am one of the angel band ; 
To my head a crown is given, 

And a harp is in my hand ; 
I have learned the song they sing. 

Whom Jesus hath made free. 
And the glorious walls of heaven still ring 

With my new-born melody. 

'' No sin, no grief, no pain — 
Safe in my happy home ; 
My fears all fled, my doubts all slain, 
My hour of triumph come : 



Death, 203 



O friends of my mortal years, — 
The trusted and the true, — 

You're walking still the vale of tears, 
But I wait to welcome you. 

''Do I forget? Oh, no! 

For memory's golden chain 
Shall bind my heart to the hearts below, 

Till they meet and touch again ; 
Each link is strong and bright, 

While love's electric flame 
Flows freely down like a river of light, 

To the world from whence I came. 

'' Do you mourn when another star 

Shines out from the glorious sky? 
Do you weep wlien the voice of war 

And the rage of conflict die? 
Why, then, should your tears roll down. 

Or your heart be sorely riven. 
For another gem in the Saviour's crown. 

And another soul in heaven?" 



204 Death. 



THAT the end was drawing near, Perthes 
perfectly knew and openly declared, 
and he looked forward to it with w^onderful 
composure. To Dorner he WTote, " The con- 
sciousness of life being quite over is to me 
a very peculiar and by no means depressing 
feeling ; rather, on the contrary, exhilarating. 
I am full of thankfulness to God." Indeed, as 
far as man could judge, Perthes had not for 
one moment, during the whole of his illness, 
to struggle with the fear of death. "God is, 
for His Son's sake, very gracious to me, a 
poor sinner," was his constant exclamation in 
hours of pain. To Neander he wrote, "In 
hope and faith I am joyfully passing over into 
the land where truth will be made clear, and 
love pure." In a letter, written early in April, 
we find it said, "Perthes is perfectly recon- 
ciled to die ; he is calm and confident. Wheth- 
er this present confidence and calm will abide 
with him during the last struggle, he does not 
know ; for Nature, he says, often asserts her 



Death. 205 



sway most strongly when just about to lose 
her power forever; and that, therefore, there 
may possibly be before him a fearful conflict, 
a seeming despair, a cry, ^ My God ! my God ! 
wherefore hast thou forsaken me ? ' But he 
hopes for a peaceful, placid falling asleep, 
and makes it a subject of prayer." 

On Thursday, the i8th of May, the doctor 
was able to tell him that all would soon be 
over. He had no longer any actual pain, and 
on being asked whether his dreams were dis- 
tressing, he answered, "No, no; not now; — 
once distressing, now delightful." Sometimes 
he would pray aloud and repeat hymns in a 
firm voice. But for the most part he lay there 
peaceful and joyful ; and the peace and joy 
that God had granted him pervaded all that 
were near. " When he folded his cold hands," 
wrote one of his daughters, " and prayed from 
his inmost soul, we too were constrained to 
fold our hands and pray, it was all so sublime, 
so blessed ; we felt as though our Lord Jesus 
Christ were with us in the room." " The last 



2o6 Death, 



conflict is severe," we find it said in another 
letter ; " but we see with our own eyes that he 
can overcome it in love, and without pain or 
fear. The last enemy loses all his terrors for 
us, and the resurrection seems nearer to us 
than the death." 

About six o'clock in the evening, an intimate 
friend, the court preacher, Jacobi, came in. 
Perthes opened his languid eyes, and stretched 
out his hands to him, saying, "For the last 
time ; it w^ill soon be over, but it is a hard 
struggle." About seven, Jacobi and the doctor 
left him ; at eight, his breathing became slow- 
er and deeper, but without occasioning any 
distress. His w^hole family stood round him. 
Perthes had folded his hands, and for a short 
time prayed aloud, but his speech had now 
become inarticulate ; only the oft-repeated 
words, "My Redeemer — Lord — forgiveness," 
could be distinguished. It had now grown 
dark. When lights were brought in, a great 
change was visible in his features ; every trace 
of pain was gone, his eyes shone, his whole 



Death. 207 



aspect was, as •it were, transfigured, so that 
those around him could only think of his bliss, 
not of their own sorrow. The last sounds of 
this world that reached the dying ear were, 
"Yea, the Lord hath prepared blessedness and 
joy for thee, where Christ is the Sun, the Life, 
and the All in All." He drew one long, last 
breath ; like a lightning flash, an expression 
of agony passed over his face, and then his 
triumph was complete. It was within a few 
minutes of half past ten. Immediately after 
death a look of peace and joy settled on his 
face. Early on the morning of the 2 2d of 
May, he was buried in the churchyard of 
Gotha, and his favorite hymn was sung around 
his grave : — 

What can molest or injure me, who have in Christ a part? 
Filled with the peace and grace of God, most gladly I 
depart. 

Life of Perthes, 



2o8 Death. 



''T^IS sweet, as year by year we Iosq 
JL Friends out of sight, in faith to muse 
How grows in Paradise our store. 

Then pass, ye mourners, cheerly on, 

Through prayer unto the tomb, 
Still, as ye watch hfe's falHng leaf. 
Gathering from every loss and grief 

Hope of new^ spring and endless home. 

Then cheerly to your work again. 

With hearts new-braced and set 
To run, untired, love's blessed race. 
As meet for those, who face to face, 

Over the grave their Lord have met. 

Keble. 




THE ETERNAL HOME. 



There are our loved ones in their rest! 

They've crossed Time's river, now no more 
They heed the bubbles on its breast, 

Nor feel the storms that sweep its shore. 
But there pure love can live, can last; — 

They look for us their home to share; 
"When we, in turn, away have passed, 

What joyful greetings wait us there. 
Beyond the river! 

Dublin Univ. Magazine, 

H 

(209) 




THE ETERNAL HOME- 



PERHAPS the best illustration of heaven 
which our earth-life affords to us is the 
idea of Home. Home embraces all we can 
conceive of peace, of rest, of joy — the pres- 
ence of the dear ones whose happiness is in- 
terblended with our own, the circle of loving 
services and devoted uses, with God for its 
great Head, God's word for its chief guide, 
the fostering and development of goodness and 
delight in each other as its prime object. And 
heaven is the idea of home, extended, as to 
locality, into everlasting habitations, enlarged, 
as to inhabitants, till it comprehends all God's 
children, with its peace intensified till it knows 

no fear, its joy amplified till every tear shall 

(2n) 



212 The Eternal Home. 

be wiped away from the face, its holiness 
increased till nothing shall hurt or destroy in 
all God's holy mountain, with innumerable 
multitudes on multitudes as ministers of bless- 
ing, — one to all and all to each. All the 
lingering attachments which bind our heart to 
home receive grander measure and profounder 
depth, in proportion as, with our idea of home, 
we associate the fuller idea of heaven, with 
God as the universal Father, and the saved 
as our universal brethren. Arguing from the 
seen to the unseen, from the known to the 
unknown, which is the only sound method, 
the idea of home^ which we know, will enable 
us to attain a conception of the heaven^ which 
we know not yet. In a sense far deeper than 
our perceptions previously enable us to utter 
it, we may say that our " home is in heaven ; " 
for all the various felicities, with which the 
divine mercy allows our home-life on earth 
to be environed, are only mundane pictures 
or emblems of the broader and more bountiful 
bliss which the same divine mercy has pre- 



The Eternal Home. 213 

pared in heaven. Not that the earthly shall 
be sublimed or intensified into the heavenly ; 
but, with that difference which ever must exist 
between earth and heaven, the earthly j^urcst 
is still the type of the heavenly -pure. 

Our Eter7ial Ho?7ies. 



UPWARD, where the stars are burning, 
Silent, silent in their turning 
Round the never-changing pole, — 
Upward, where the sky is brightest. 
Upward, where the blue is lightest, — 
Lift I now my longing soul. 



Far above that arch of gladness. 
Far beyond these clouds of sadness. 

Are the many mansions fair. 
Far from pain and sin and folly, 
In that palace of the holy, — 

I would find my mansion there! 



214 ^^^ Eternal Home. 

Where the glory brightly dwelleth, 
Where the new song sweetly swelleth, 

And the discord never comes, — 
Where life's stream is ever laving, 
And the palm is ever waving, — 

That must be the Home of homes. 

BONAR. 



THE supreme joy of paradise will be to 
adore. It will be to tell oyer, with a 
boundlessly expanded comprehension, the sac- 
rifice of Jesus, the love of the Father, the 
merciful action of the Holy Spirit. "A new 
earth." What will it be like? I know only 
that God's tabernacle will he there^ that He 
will wipe away our tears, that joy will reign ; 
and I know that it will be forever. 

When my eye, as it wanders over the 
country in summer, beholds it decked with 
so many charms, although destined to de- 
struction, my thoughts take sudden wing to 



The Eternal Home. 215 

that promised land, before whose mysteri- 
ous adorning will pale all that we now call 
beauty. 

Oh, forests with your fresh coolness ; glades 
with tempered light, filled with winged crea- 
tures rejoicing in their life of a day ; moun- 
tains with grassy summits ; majesty of peaks 
of snow ; ineffable charm of the valley ; blue 
lakes, entranced, looking up to and reflecting 
the sky, — my God made you what you are. 
It is God who will make the new earth. Our 
low prose effaces your poetry ; the hymn 
which rises from your solitudes is overpowered 
by our jarring voices ; your flowers pass away ; 
the flowers of Paradise will be sweeter still, 
and will not fade. But God has prepared 
still more. 

Glory ! This is a sublime promise, and I 
would not be ungrateful for any one of God's 
gifts. And yet, if I may dare to say so, 
whether from feebleness of nature, or con- 
scious unworthiness, glory dazzles me, — does 
not thrill my heart. 



2i6 The Eternal Home. 

A sweeter certainty, a more intimate happi- 
ness, fills it with emotion — that of loving. 

To love my God. To have some lowly 
place in heaven, and from thence to see my 
God, from thence to love him with enlarged 
capacities, delivered from all my coldness, all 
my insincerity. To love my friends in God 
with an affection also enlarged, purified, bright, 
burning as the sun ; no fear of idolatry ; no 
envy to corrode, no selfishness, no deceit. 

I have so poorly loved those I loved most ! 
How often my aftection has sunk beneath the 
weight of earthl}^ cares ! How often I have 
mourned my heart's powerlessness to cherish 
unqualifiedly. I have bruised myself against 
the limitations of my own love for others, as 
well as against those of the love of others 
for me. But now, everywhere there is the 
Infinite, — in me, around me; infinite tender- 
ness, and this co-existing with infinite purity. 

Madame de Gasparin. 



The Eternal Home. 217 



MULTITUDES — multitudes stood up in bliss, 
Made equal to the angels, glorious, fair ; 
With harps, palms, wedding garments, kiss of peace, 
And crowned and haloed hair. 

They sang a song, a new song in the height, 
Harping with harps to Him who is strong and true : 

They drank new wine, their eyes saw with new light ; 
Lo ! all thinofs were made new. 



o 



Glory touched glory on each blessed head, 

Hands locked dear hands never to sunder more : 

These were the new-begotten from the dead 
Whom the great birthday bore. 

Heart answered heart, soul answered soul at rest. 
Double against each other, filled, sufficed, 

All loving, loved of all ; but loving best 
And best beloved of Christ. 

I saw that one who lost her love in pam. 

Who trod on thorns, who drank the loathsome 
cup; 

The lost in night, in day was found again ; 
The fallen was lifted up. 



2i8 The Eternal Home. 

They stood together in the blessed noon, 

They sang together through the length of days ; 

Each loving face bent Sunwards like a moon 
New lit with love and praise. 

Christina Rossetti. 



HEAVEN is no place of moping drowsi- 
ness, inglorious indolence, sheer idle- 
ness and nothingness. • Everlasting life is the 
most blissful life, because it is the most exqui- 
site and perfect life, and hence the most active 
and energetic life. Man is made for society ; 
it is not good for him to be alone. Solitude 
for any length of time is a great privation and 
penalty, sometimes greater than human nature 
can bear. We are intended for mutual inter- 
course and social bliss, — made for the happy 
communion and fellowship of the saints. The 
heavenly city is our true and proper home, 
where we shall have pleasures to our tastes, a 
community exquisitely social, friendships sur- 
prisingly tender and affectionate ; duties, occu- 



. The Eternal Home, 219 

pations, essentially active and communicative. 
What is happiness without union and affection, 
the tenderness of kindness and good will, the 
pleasures of society, friendship, and love ? 
Where is heaven without fellows to share it, 
companions to partake of it? How could we 
enjoy it without objects of attachment to in- 
terest our wishes ; links of brotherhood to hold 
fast our affections, to twine round our hearts; 
feelings of esteem and endearment to win the 
mind and to fill the soul? Future bliss, in a 
great degree, depends on society, — is consti- 
tuted and consummated by it. All the unnum- 

* 

bered multitudes that throng the countless 
worlds and labyrinths of worlds of the vast 
and boundless universe, compose but one body 
under one head, — are consolidated into one 
communion and fellowship under Christ the 
Lord. 

Friends will meet their friends in the body 
again, to recognize each other, and to mingle 
again in heaven ; they will revive old friend- 
ships on earth, acknowledge former kindness- 



220 The Eternal Home, 

es, and return past favors and benefits in the 
land of their pilgrimage. How will parents 
and children, brothers and sisters, husbands 
and wives, pastors and their flocks, benefac- 
tors and their beneficiaries, meet and be united 
once more in the closest intimacy of profound- 
est cordiality, warmest affection, tenderest en- 
dearment, to cement more strongly and forever 
those nearest, dearest ties of love and friend- 
ship that death had so long, so cruelly, cut 
and severed ! 

Here we are limited in our society, circum- 
scribed in our means of making friends, as 
well as our opportunities of meeting and asso- 
ciating with them. We can but rarely have 
the advantage of the social converse and inti- 
macy of those we love, or the mutual commun- 
ion and fellowship of such as we are assured 
could instruct and edify us. Occupied in 
business, perplexed with cares and troubles, 
oppressed with pain of body, affliction of mind, 
loss of friends, or of estate, we are deprived 
of mutual aid, social union, affectionate con- 



The Eternal Home. 221 

verse and cooperation. We cannot commune 
with the companions of our choice, nor meet 
the friends of our hearts ; distance prevents it, 
circumstances interrupt it, heahh or means will 
not admit of it. But in heaven there is nei- 
ther sorrow nor crj'ing, neither toil nor trouble, 
neither distraction of business nor opposition 
of interests. We shall have the blessings of 
the best society ; the happiness of perpetual 
intimacy ; constant, open, unreserved commun- 
ion with the greatest, wisest, and best of crea- 
tion ; with the members and brethren of Christ ; 
with the hosts and hierarchies of heaven ; with 
God and the Lamb. "For the Lamb, which 
is in the midst of the throne, shall feed them, 
and shall lead them unto living fountains of 
waters ; and God shall wipe away all tears 

from their eyes." 

John Whitley. 



222 The Eternal Home. 



OH, sweet home-echo on the pilgrim's way ! 
Thrice welcome message from a land of 
. light, 
As through a clouded sky the moonbeams stray, 

So on Eternity's deep-shrouded night 
Streams a mild radiance from that cheering word, 
'' So shall we be forever wuth the Lord." 

At home with Jesus ! Him who went before. 
For His own people mansions to prepare ; 

The soul's deep longings stilled, its conflicts o'er. 
All rest and blessedness with Jesus there. 

What home like this can the wide earth afford ? 

" So shall we be forever with the Lord." 

With Him all gathered ! to that blessed home. 
Through all its windings, still the pathway tends ; 

While ever and anon bright glimpses come 
Of that fair city where the journey ends, — 

Where all of bliss is centred in one word, 

"So shall wx be forever with the Lord." 

Here kindred hearts are severed far and wide 
By many a weary mile of land and sea. 



The Eternal Home. 223 

Or life's all-varied cares and paths divide ; — 

But yet a joyful gathering shall be, — 
The broken links repaired, the lost restored, 
'' So shall w^e be forever w^ith the Lord." 

O precious promise, mercifully given ! 

Well may it hush the w^ail of earthly w^oe ; 
O'er the dark passage to the gates of heaven, 

The light of hope and resurrection throw. 
Thanks for the blessed life-inspiring word, — 
" So shall we be forever with the Lord." 

Hymns from the La?id of Luther. 



WHY may not Moses, and Elijah, and 
Peter, and James, and John — all of 
whom w^ere witnesses of the Transfiguration — 
now, in social intercourse, speak of the time 
when they met together on the Mount, and 
were permitted to see their Redeemer's " excel- 
lent glory ; " a faint shadow of the glory now 
revealed to, them? As memory retraces that 
heavenly scene, will not their hearts kindle 
with more fervent love towards Him " who 



224 ^"^^ Eternal Home. 

hath made them kings and priests unto God"? 
Will they not sing a louder and sweeter strain 
unto Him who has procured for them an open 
and abundant entrance into the holy of holies? 
And will not Peter now exclaim, with more 
ardent affection and more devout thankfulness 
to his glorified Master, " Lord, it is good for us 
to be here"? Can we conceive of any possible 
obstacle to such a union of pious hearts and 
holy social intercourse? to such a renewal 
of earthly recollections? Is there any reason 
why Paul and Barnabas, and Luke and Tim- 
othy, — fellow-laborers on ' earth, and compan- 
ions in glory, — should not now review, with 
gratitude and praise, their common dangers, 
and trials, and sufferings, in their efforts for 
the conversion of the heathen world? If not, 
— and assuredly there is not, — then why may 
not all pious friends and relatives, who have 
journeyed together through life's pilgrimage, 
be permitted to meet at its close, and review 
the dangers and count up the blessings of the 
way ; and with united hearts and voices, bless 



The Eternal Home, 225 

Him who conducted them safel}^ to the haven 
where they would be? Why may not parents 
and their children, brothers and sisters, unite 
once more in the social circle, and send up 
their anthems of praise for being brought 
together to this state of glory? Love never 
faileth ; not even when faith is lost in sight, 
and hope in fruition. In heaven, the love of 
God and the love of our neighbor will be our 
highest duty, our highest privilege, our high- 
est joy. And so we trust it will be in refer- 
ence to those endearments which now^ consti- 
tute the chief charm of life ; the}^ wdll be 
purified, strengthened, and perpetuated. 

" It is yet but a litde w^hile," says Melvill, 
" and we shall be delivered from the burden 
and the conflict, and, w^ith all those who have 
preceded us in the righteous struggle, enjoy 
the deep raptures of a Mediator's presence. 
Then, reunited to the friends with whom we 
took sweet counsel upon earth, w^e shall re- 
count our toil only to heighten our ecstasy, 
and call to mind the tug and the din of the 

IS 



226 The Eternal Home. 

war, only that with a more bounding throb, 

and a richer song, we may feel and celebrate 

the wonders of redemption." 

Dorr. 



-•04 



THE Church of Christ is a society which 
is forever shifting its locality and alter- 
ing its forms. It is the whole church, "the 
whole family in heaven and earth." So, then, 
those who were on earth, and are now in 
heaven, are yet members of the same family 
still. Those who had their home here, now 
have it there. Let us see what it is that we 
should learn from this doctrine. It is this — 
that the dead are not lost to us. There is a 
sense in which the departed are ours more than 
they were before. There is a sense in which 
the Apostle Paul or John, the good and great 
of ages past, belong to this age more than to 
that in which they lived, but in which they 
were not understood ; in which the common- 
place and every-day part of their lives hindered 



The Eternal Home. 227 

the brightness and glory and beauty of their 
character from shining forth. So it is in the 
family. It is possible for men to live in the 
same house, and partake of the same meal 
from day to day, and from year to year, and 
yet remain strangers to each other, mistaking 
each other's feelings, not comprehending each 
other's character ; and it is only when the 
Atlantic rolls between them, and half a hemi- 
sphere is interposed, that we learn how dear 
they are to us ; how all our life is bound up 
in deep anxiety with their existence. There- 
fore it is the Christian feels that the family is 
not broken. Think you that family can break 
or end ? that because the chair is empty, there- 
fore he, your child, is no more? It may be 
so with the coarse, the selfish, the unbeliev- 
ing, the superstitious ; but the eye of Faith 
sees there only a transformation. He is not 
there, he is risen. You see the place where 
he was, but he has passed to heaven. So at 
least the parental heart of David felt of old, 
"by faith and not by sight," when speaking 



228 The Eternal Home. 

of his infant child. " I shall go to him, but 
he shall not return to me." 

F. W. Robertson. 



WE must not doubt, or fear, or dread. 
That love for life is only given, 
And that the calm and sainted dead 

Will meet estranged and cold in heaven : 
Oh, love were poor and vain indeed. 
Based on so harsh and stern a creed. 

True that this earth must pass away. 
With all the starry worlds of light. 

With all the glory of the day. 
And calmer tenderness of night ; 

For in that radiant home can shine 

Alone the immortal and divine. 

Earth's lower things, — her pride, her fame, 
Her science, learning, wealth, and power, - 

Slow growths that through long ages came. 
Or fruits of some convulsive hour. 

Whose very memory must- decay, — 

Heaven is too pure for such as they. 



The Eternal Home. 229 

They are complete ; their work is done ; 

So let them sleep in endless rest: 
Love's life is only here begun, 

Nor is nor can be fully blest ; 
It has no room to spread its wings 
Amid this crowd of meaner things. 



Just for the very shadow thrown 
Upon its sweetness here below, 

The cross that it must bear alone, 
And bloody baptism of woe, 

Crowned and completed through its pain, 

We know that it shall rise again. 



So, if its flame burn pure and bright 
Here, where our air is dark and dense, 

And nothing in this world of night 
Lives with a living so intense, — 

When it shall reach its home at length. 

How bright its light ! how strong its strength ! 

And while the vain, weak loves of earth 
(For such base counterfeits abound) 



230 The Eternal Home. 

Shall perish with what gave them birth, — 
Their graves are green and fresh around. 
No funeral song shall need to rise 
For the true love that never dies. 

If in my heart I now could fear 

That, risen again, we should not know 

What was our life of life when here, — 
The hearts we loved so much below, — 

I would arise this very day, 

And cast so poor a thing away. 

But love is no such soulless clod : 

Living, perfected it shall rise. 
Transfigured in the light of God, 

And giving glory to the skies : 
And that which makes this life so sweet 
Shall render heaven's joy complete. 

A. A. Procter. 



WE must think of heaven as an existing 
reality. It is that which we should 
bring near to ourselves, for our brethren and 



The Eternal Home. 231 

our kinsmen, sainted and glorified in heaven, 
have their present beatitudes, their present 
splendors, their present songs. Let us think 
of them, therefore, as only separated from us 
by a veil, and as absolutely and truly think- 
ing and feeling as any of ourselves. But 
that veil will soon be torn aside ; we shall 
soon ourselves have entered that region of 
spirits. Will there be those who shall be 
ready to w^elcome us ? Shall there be those 
whom we ourselves can remember? This is 
not a barren speculation ; it is that which 
surely has engaged every thinking mind and 
every susceptible heart. 

To prove how disinterested were the spirit 
and purpose of the first Christian . teachers, 
they always rested their labors upon a reward : 
they did not deny that they contemplated a 
reward, and a reward full and comprehensive ; 
but it w^as a reward, not of this w^orld, not 
of its withering palms or its uncertain riches : 
it was a rew^ard which consisted in the con- 
version, in the salvation, and in the glory of 



232 The Eternal Home. 

those spirits whom they had instriimentally 
rescued and saved. " For what is our hope, 
or joy, or crown of rejoicing? Are not even 
ye in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ 
at his coming? For ye are our glory and our 
joy. That I may rejoice in the day of the 
Lord that I have not run in vain, neither 
labored in vain. Look to yourselves that ye 
receive a full reward. That we may present 
every man perfect in Christ Jesus." Now all 
this, surely, is confirmation strong, the confir- 
mation of Holy Writ, that the apostles antici- 
pated a reward, and that that reward cannot 
for a moment be separated from the recogni- 
tion of those who were the fruits of their 
ministry, and the seals of their zeal. 

But when it is necessary to insinuate kindly 
and soothing solace more distinctly and more 
impressively into the mind, the veil is raised, 
the eternal world is developed. " I would not 
have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning 
them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, 
even as others which have no hope. For if 



The Eternal Home. 233 

we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even 
so them also which sleep in Jesus will God 
bring with him. For this we say unto you 
b}^ the Word of the Lord, that we which are 
alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord, 
shall not prevent them which are asleep. For 
the Lord himself shall descend from heaven 
with a shout, with the voice of the archangel^ 
and with the trump of God : and the dead in 
Christ shall rise first : then we which are alive 
and remain shall be caught up together with 
them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the 
air ; and so shall we be ever with the Lord." 
Now, granting that the doctrine is rather 
assumed in Scripture than stated and illus- 
trated, yet as all was truly implied, what 
testimony can be more distinct, what evidence 
more perfect, than that which we have now 
cited in your ears? When, standing near the 
grave of Bethany, our Lord says, " Believest 
thou this?-' and when, more directly, "Thy 
brother shall rise again," was it that that 
brother was to be absorbed and lost in the 



234 ^^^ Eternal Home. 



myriads and the millions of spirits, so that 

the sisters, who had lately laid him in the 

grave, should see him and know him no 

more? 

Hamilton. 



K>*- 



OH, talk to me of heaven ! I love 
To hear about my home above ; 
For there doth many a loved one dwell 
In light and joy ineffable. 
Oh, tell me how they shine and sing, 
While every harp rings echoing ; 
And every glad and tearless eye 
Beams like the bright sun, gloriously 
Tell me of that victorious palm 

Each hand in glory beareth ; 
Tell me of that celestial calm 

Each face in glory weareth. 

O happy, happy country ! where 

There entereth not a sin ! 
And Death, who keeps its portals fair, 

May never once come in. 



The Eternal Home. 235 



No grief can change their day to night — 
The darkness of that land is light. 
Sorrow and sighing God hath sent 
Far thence to endless banishment. 



O happy, happy land ! in thee 

Shines the unveiled Divinity, 

Shedding through each adoring breast 

A holy calm, a halcyon rest. 

And those blest souls whom death did sever, 

Have met to mingle joys forever. 

Oh, soon may heaven unclose to me! 

Oh, may I soon that glory see ! 

And my faint, weary spirit stand 

Within that happy, happy land. 

Bowles. 



THE spirits of the just in heaven, though 
represented as waiting for the adoption, 
even the redemption of the body, are repre- 
sented Hkewise as already "made perfect." 
Absent from the body, they are present with 
the Lord. And this expression gives us that 



236 The Eternal Home. 

notion of heaven which is at once most intel- 
Hgible and most dehghtful. When straining 
our eyes to discern some of the forms which 
characterize heavenly things, and om* ears to 
discern some of the notes of heavenly music, 
and our minds to understand the new rela- 
tions and fellowships of God and His Saints, 
we find a resting-place to our jaded spirits in 
the words, so familiar to us, "In my Fa- 
ther's house are many mansions ; if it were 
not so, I would have told you. I go to pre- 
pare a place for you. And if I go and pre- 
pare a place for you, I will come again and 
receive you unto myself; that where I am, 
there ye may be also." What more would 
we have? When shrinking from the unknown, 
the mysterious future, is it not enough to be 
assured that we are going to Christ, that we 
shall be with Christ? In His Name is com- 
prehended everything that is attractive to our 
renewed hearts, everything that can inspire 
confidence, everything to banish fear. No 
storm ever raged on earth which He had not 



The Eternal Home. 237 

power, even in the days of His humiliation, 
to quell ; no danger from which He could not 
deliver; no good which He could not bestow. 
His presence was the pledge of safety even 
in the tempest ; it was the pledge of life even 
in the chamber of death; it was the pledge 
of peace and joy amid distress and disease. 
All this, while yet he wore the garb of a ser- 
vant, and submitted to hunger, and thirst, and 
weariness on earth. What must His presence 
be in heaven ! It must be heaven itself. 
" Present with the Lord ! " — no affection of 
the soul can turn back on itself, pained that 
it can find no object worthy of it ; no want of 
the soul can be unsatisfied. In His presence 
our spirits, with the most enlarged capacities 
and desires, shall hunger no more, neither 
thirst any more, for He shall feed them, and 
lead them to fountains of living water. 

These views should comfort us greatly con- 
cerning the dead who have died in the Lord. 
They are not lost, but gone before. We are 
on the dark side of death, they are on its 



238 The Eternal Home. 

bright side. If we weep, it should be for our- 
selves, not for them. The change which has 
passed upon them has translated them from 
a sorrowful to a sorrowless condition. They 
have attained the very end for which an 
earthly life was given them, even fitness 
and ripeness for a heavenly, — the complet- 
ing and perfecting of character. They have 
reached the shore of the promised land, while 
we are still on the billows of this restless and 
dangerous life. They are now with Him, in 
whose presence is fulness of joy, and at whose 
right hand there are pleasures forevermore. 

J. Kennedy. 



THAT clime is not like this dull clime of ours ; 
All, all is brightness there ; 
A sweeter influence breathes around its flowers, 

And a benigner air. 
No calm below is like that calm above, 
No region here is like that realm of love ; 
Earth's softest spring ne'er shed so soft a light, 
Earth's brightest summer never shone so bright. 



The Eternal Home. 239 

That sky is not like this sad sky of ours, 

Tinged with earth's change and care ; 
No shadow dims it, and no rain-cloud lowers, 

No broken sunshine there : 
One everlasting stretch of azure pours 
Its stainless splendor o'er those sinless shores : 
For there Jehovah shines with heavenly ray. 
And Jesus reigns, dispensing endless day. 

The dwellers there are not like those of earth ; 

No mortal stain they bear ; 
And yet they seem of kindred blood and birth : 

Whence, and how canie they there? 
Earth w^as their native soil ; from sin and shame, 
Through tribulation, they to glory came ; 
Bond-slaves, delivered from sin's crushing load ; 
Brands plucked from burning by the hand of God. 

Yon robes of theirs ai*e not like those below ; 

No angel's half so bright: 
Whence came that beauty, whence that living glow? 

And whence that radiant white? 
Washed in the blood of the atoning Lamb, 
Fair as the light these robes of theirs became ; 



240 The Eternal Home. 

And now, all tears wiped off from every eye, 
They wander where the freshest pastures lie. 
Through all the nightless day of that unfading sky, 

BONAR. 



Y 



E shall see Abraham, and Isaac, and 
Jacob, in the kingdom of God." If 
3^ou see them without recognizing them, what 
does seeing them signify to you? 

A crown of rejoicing is prepared for the 
Apostle of the Gentiles ; his converts are that 
crown. But if he does not know them again, 
what becomes of his triumph? "Make to 
yourselves friends of the mammon of unright- 
eousness, that when ye fail they may receive 
you into everlasting habitations." Friends^ 
the very same whose trembling hands your 
hands have pressed, whose tears you have 
dried here below. If they are merely X, Y, 
or Z, why, they can no longer be friends, and 
Scripture testimony is overthrown. 

On the morning of the resurrection many 



The Eternal Home. 241 

saints left their graves, and showed themselves 
to many. Do away with the recognition of 
individuals, and you destroy all proof of the 
miracle. 

Upon the holy mountain there appeared two 
men in glory, one on each side of the trans- 
figured Saviour. Who has announced their 

names to Peter? No one; nor had Peter ever 

« 

seen them; yet he knows them. '^Master, it 
is good for us to be here ; let us make three 
tabernacles, one for Thee, one for Moses, one 
for Ehas." 

I thank Thee, my God, the river of Lethe 
may indeed flow through the Elysian Fields ; 
it does not water the Christian's Paradise. 

Madame de Gasparin. 



YES, we shall see God, and my soul 
leaps at the thought; yes, we shall taste 
of peace, that here our agitated hearts can 
never know ; yes, we shall adore, sing mar- 
vellous hymns, and our bosoms palpitate with 



242 The Eternal Home. 

joy; yes, we shall adore, we shall glorify 
God; but contemplation, repose, celestial con- 
certs, love, and adoration, — you shall be a 
life, not an absorption. 

God's Paradise, I know the borders of it, 
and from these borders emerge so many genial 
rays of warmth as well as light, that my 
heart burns within me. In His Paradise I 
find myself perfected, sanctified with all my 
soul, my affections, my memories. His Para- 
dise, oh, it is simple as it is splendid ; more 
grand, yet nearer to me ; life in its personal- 
ity, and personality in its perfect harmony 
with God. It is my native country, not a 
foreign land ; it is the house of my Father, 
not the temple of an abstract Divinity. I do 
not see an indistinguishable throng of phan- 
toms ; I meet brothers and dear friends. Such 
is the happiness my nature craves. To such 
a country I desire to emigrate ; the remotest 
view of it sustains my courage. There I 
shall repose, as one reposes in the house of 

a father. 

Madame de Gasparin. 



The Eternal Home. 243 



BUT we, when life grows dim. 
When its last melodies float o'er our 
way, 
Its changeful hues before us faintly swim. 
Its flitting lights decay ; 

Even though we bid farew^ell 
Unto the Spring's blue skies and budding trees, 
Yet may we lift our hearts in hope to dwell 

'Midst brighter things than these ; 

And think of deathless flowers. 
And of bright streams to glorious valleys given. 
And know the while how little dreams of ours 

Can shadow forth of heaven. 

The Antique Sepulchre. 



IF the mere conception of the reunion of 
good men in a future state infused a mo- 
mentary rapture into the mind of Tully ; if 
an airy speculation — for there is reason to 



244 "I^he Eternal Home, 

fear it had little hold on his convictions — 
could inspire him with such delight, what may 
we be expected to feel who are assured of 
such an event by the true sayings of God ! 
How should we rejoice in the prospect — the 
certainty, rather — of spending a blissful eter- 
nity with those whom we loved on earth ; of 
seeing them emerge from the ruins of the 
tomb, and the deeper ruins of the fall, not 
only uninjured, but refined and perfected, 
"with every tear wiped from their eyes," 
standing before the throne of God and the 
Lamb in white robes, and palms in their 
hands, crying, with a loud voice, "Salvation 
to God, that sitteth upon the throne, and to 
the Lamb, forever and ever ! " What delight 
will it afford to renew the sweet counsel we 
have taken together, to recount the toils of 
combat and the labor of the way, and to 
approach, not the house, but the throne, of 
God in company, in order to join in the sym- 
phonies of heavenly voices, and lose ourselves 



The Eternal Home. 245 

amid the splendors and fruitions of the beatific 
vision ! 

To that state, all the pious on earth are 
tending ; and if there is a law, from whose 
operation none are exempt, which irresistibly 
conveys their bodies to darkness and to dust, 
there is another, not less certain or less power- 
ful, which conducts their spirits to the abodes 
of bliss, — to the bosom of their Father and 
their God. The wheels of nature are not 
made to roll backward; everything presses 
on towards eternity. From the birth of time 
an impetuous current has set in, which bears 
all the sons of men towards that interminable 
ocean. Meanwhile heaven is attracting to 
itself whatever is congenial to its nature, is 
enriching itself by the spoils of earth, and 
collecting within its capacious bosom whatever 
is pure, permanent, and divine, leaving noth- 
ing for the last fire to consume but the objects 
and the slaves of concupiscence ; while every- 
thing which grace has prepared and beauti- 
fied shall be gathered and selected from the 



246 The Eternal Home. 

ruins of the world to adorn that Eternal City, 

which hath no need of the sun, neither of 

the moon, to shine in it, for the glory of God 

doth enlighten it, and the Lamb is the light 

thereof. 

Robert Hall. 



THE anticipated heaven of the Christian 
differs from the anticipated heaven of 
any other man, not in the distinctness with 
which its imagery is perceived, but in the 
kind of objects which are hoped for. The 
Apostle has told us the character of heaven, 
'* Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither 
have entered into the heart of man, the things 
which God hath prepared for them that love 
Him ; " which glorious words are sometimes 
strangely misinterpreted, as if the Apostle 
meant merely rhetorically to exalt the concep- 
tion of the heavenly world, as of something 
beyond all power to imagine or to paint. The 
Apostle meant something infinitely deeper. 



The Sternal Home. 247 

The heaven of God is not only that which 
"eye hath not seen," but that which eye can 
never see ; its glories are not of that kind at 
all w^hich can ever stream in forms of beauty 
on the eye, or pour in melody upon the en- 
raptured ear, — not such joys as genius in its 
most gifted hour (here called "the heart of 
man ") can invent or imagine : it is something 
which these sensuous organs of ours never 
can appreciate — bliss of another kind alto- 
gether, revealed to the spirit of man by the 
Spirit of God — joys such as spirits alone can 

receive. 

F. W. Robertson. 



WHAT must it be to dwell above, 
At God's right hand, where Jesus reigns, 
Since the sweet earnest of His love 

O'erwhelms us on these dreary plains ! 
No heart can think, no tongue explain. 
What bliss it is with Christ to reign. 



248 The Eternal Home. 

When sin no more obstructs our sight, 
When sorrow pains our heart no more, 

How shall we view the Prince of Light, 
And all His works of grace explore? 

What heights and depths of love divine 

Will there through endless ages shine ! 

Well, He has fixed the happy day 

When the last tears shall wet our eyes, 

And God shall wipe those tears away, 
And fill us with divine surprise 

To hear His voice, and see His face, 

And feel His infinite embrace ! 

This is the heaven I long to know ! 

For this with patience I would wait. 
Till, weaned from earth and all below, 

I mount to my celestial seat, 
And wave my palm, and wear my crown. 
And, with the elders, cast them down. 

Swain. 



The Eternal Hoine. 249 



WE think of gathering together " in a 
great muhitude ; " of standing in a 
throng, worshipping in a temple ; of always 
beholding the Saviour ; of always standing 
near to him in place ; of being literally, and 
in the narrowest sense, locally, " with Christ ^'^ 
forever. Now, unquestionably, these, and the 
like expressions, being scriptural, are most 
valuable, and in many ways helpful to our 
languid conceptions. But they are very capa- 
ble of narrow and poor interpretation. Hold- 
ing by them in their literality, we find our 
ideas contracting. We need the corrective 
and expansive influence of those other ex- 
pressions — also scriptural — which carry our 
thoughts away beyond all narrow limits into 
the vastness and variousness of celestial life, 
— " In my Father's house are many man- 
sions." 

Out of the idea of vastness arises, almost 
necessarily, the idea of an endless variety. 
At least, it is so in this world. And surely 



250 The Eternal Home. 

we must not think of heaven as less than 
earth. The variety existing in God's works 
here is one of the principal charms of the 
natural world. Not two faces in all the world, 
nor two trees, nor two flow^ers, nor two blades 
of grass, could be pronounced exactly alike. 
Then, I think, we are almost bound to apply 
the analogy to the future life, and to believe 
that as there are " many mansions," so the 
furnishing and adorning of them will be very 
various. One will not be as another. There 
will not only be room for all, but interest for 
all. We do not go to heaven to lose our nat- 
ural tastes, our sinless preferences, our pecu- 
liar desires ; but rather to have all these drawn 
out, exercised, gratified, in a far higher de- 
gree. Would you think of the " many man- 
sions"- — that is, of vast realms of celestial 
space — as filled up only with one kind of 
life? Then it would follow that heaven is to 
be a plainer, and a poorer, and a less interest- 
ing place than this earth. And unless our 
own nature were pressed down into some kind 



The Eternal Home 251 

of mechanical exactness and shape, weariness 
would ensue. There would be a sighing for 
the lost seasons of the earth, and for its with- 
ered flowers, and for its light and shade, and 
for its many countries, and for its encircling 
seas. But no ! there will be places, pursuits, 
occupations, and enjoyments for all. The 
" many mansions," we may be sure, contain 
many, many modes, and ways, and powers, 
and possibilities, and scenes — all united by a 
principle of sacred harmony, and yet furnish- 
ing endless and beautiful exemplifications of 
the beneficent law of variety .^ which, in so far 
as our observation extends, pertains to all the 
works of God. 

" If it were not so I would have told you ; I 
go to prepare a place for you." Precious 
words ! Let every mourner cling to them as 
the very tie that binds him, with inseparable 
links, to the dearest of his vanished friends. 
Let every unwilling sceptic take them as 
God's provided salvation from his doubts. 
Let every heaven-bound pilgrim see them. 



252 The Eternal Home. 

written as with the first golden beams of the 
morning, always on the farthest horizon of his 
view. And let those who feel that their pil- 
grimage is drawing to a close, and who look 
wistfully, and sometimes in vain, for a clear 
outline of the better country to which they are 
going, rest themselves on such a text as this, 
until strength is recruited, and the clouds pass 
over, and they can "go on their way" — if 
not "rejoicing," at least in peace. 

Alexander Raleigh. 



HOW many graves around us lie ! 
How many homes are in the sky ! 
Yes, for each saint doth Christ prepare 

A place with care : 
Thy Home is waiting, brother, there! 

F. Sachse. 



The Eternal Home. 253 



AND now, Lord, what pure and resplen- 
dent light is this in which Thy blessed 
ones dwell ! How justly did Thine Apostle 
call it the inheritance of the saints in light — 
light inexpressible, light inconceivable, light 
inaccessible ! So Thou, who hast prepared 
such a light to this inferior world, for the use 
and comfort of us mortal creatures, as the 
glorious sun, which can both enlighten and 
dazzle the eyes of all beholders, hast propor- 
tionally ordained a light to that higher world, 
so much more excellent than the sun, as 
heaven is above earth, immortality above cor- 
ruption. 

If, even in Thine eyes. Thy poor despised 
church upon earth be so beautiful and amia- 
ble, — "fair as the moon, clear as the sun," 
— which yet, in the eyes of flesh, seems but 
homely and hard-favored, what infinite graces 
and perfections shall our spiritual eyes behold 
in Thy glorified spouse above ? what pure 
sanctity, what sincere charity, what clear 



254 ^'^^ Eternal Home. 

knowledge, what absolute joy, what entire 
union, w^hat wonderful majesty, what com- 
plete felicity ! All shine alike in their essen- 
tial glory, but in different degrees. All are 
adorned with crowns, some also with coro- 
nets ; some glitter with a sky-like, others 
with a star-like, clearness. The least hath so 
much as to make him so happy that he would 
not wish to have more ; the greatest hath so 
much that he cannot receive more. 

Oh, divine distribution of bounty, where there 
is no possibility of want or of envy ! Oh, tran- 
scendent royalty of the saints I One heaven 
is more than a thousand kingdoms, and every 
saint hath right to all. Every subject is here 
a sovereign ; and every sovereign is absolute, 
under the free homage of an infinite Creator. 
So here, crowns without cares, sceptre with- 
out burden, rule without trouble, reigning 
without change. Oh, the transitory vanity of 
all earthly greatness ! Gold is the most dura- 
ble metal ; yet even that yields to age. Solo- 
mon's rich diadem of the pure gold of Ophir 



The Eternal Home. 255 

is long since dust. These crowns of glory 
are incorruptible, beyond all the compass of 
time, without all possibility of alteration. Oh, 
the passing and unsatisfying contentments of 
earth ! How man}^ poor great ones below 
have that which they call honor and riches, 
and enjoy them not ; and if they have enjoyed 
them, complain of satiety and worthlessness ! 
Lo here, a free scope of perfect joy, of con- 
stant blessedness, without mixture, without 
intermission. Each one feels his own joy, 
feels each other's ; all rejoice in God, with a 
joy unspeakable and full of glory, and most 
sweetly bathe themselves in a pure and com- 
plete blissfulness. This very sight of blessed 
souls is happiness ; but oh, for the fruition ! 

Bishop Hall. 



256 The Eternal Home. 



NOT now^ my child : a little more rough toss- 
ing 
A little longer on the billows' foam, 
A few more journeyings in the desert darkness, 
And then the sunshine of thy Father's home ! 

One little hour ! — and then the glorious crown- 
ing. — 
The golden harp-strings and the victor's palm ! 
One little hour ! — and then the Hallelujah, — 
Eternity's long, deep, thanksgiving psalm ! 

C. P. 




6/ 



